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

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

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Hello, Dave Arnold, your host of cookie cutters coming to you live on heritage Radio Network every Tuesday. And Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick not joined as usual with Anastasia the hammer Lopez, she's on her way. For those of you who are devotees of the L train you can go to is the L train ft. But you have to spell out the curse word but my son's here and it's a family show.com. Notice that the L train is in fact shafted right now. Just as you will be noticed, joining us shortly. Additionally, sad to say last week was Jack Jackie molecule ins Lee's last week here in the booth. And so we don't have Jack this week, either. David's taking over his duties in the booth. Hi, David. He's not there. He is there. Hey, how's it going? Hey, all right. Gotta keep on your toes, man. I'm gonna get him to sit there and pester you. You never know when I'm going to pester you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Yeah, we have. We have two special guests, our scheduled special guests and our non special schedule, which we do First we'll do my nonscheduled first. Oh, here's this dusty coming in. We have my son DAX Arnold. So for any of your Yag for any of your 11 year old questions, you can call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. But the actual guest of honor today, Amos dassia. The actual guest of honor today is meathead Goldwyn, who wrote a new book. It's an eponymous book It's called meathead. And it was once I got to move away from the Stasi to pass me. It was the last time I checked, like the number two cookbook on Amazon, which is like, amazing achievement,

it is out of my mind with happiness. It's great. And

so, and the, I always forget, even though like I actually have one, two, what's the thing that they after the colon on a title? What do they call that? Semi? Cool? No, no, I mean, you know what I'm saying? Like the schpeel. After all, you know, subtitle. Okay, subtitle, the subtitle of the book is the science of great barbecue, and grilling, separate Of course, subjects. Yeah, so that

was supposed to be the title originally. But the marketing guys said, well, let's name it after you meet it. And then we have this really beautiful picture of a rib to go on the cover. And they said, No, let's put your ugly face on the cover. So you you owe

them a bottle of champagne. Because, well, you know, that's the thing. It's like, you got two things in a book I've noticed you got the actual content needs to be really good. And two people need to want to buy it and pick it up at the first after a while you get word of mouth. And then you could this could come in a brown paper wrapper after a while. But you know, you know I'm saying it's like my editor. We're gonna Shelly also edited Jim Lahey, the bread bakers. Yeah. And she she wrote as the subtitle on his first book that he came out with no, like the for the bread, no need. And she added afterwards, no work, no work book. So more than any other bread book. Like of course, of course. That's why Marie is a genius. Yes, stuff like this. So calling all of your grilling related questions and or barbecue related questions, now we're talking this can be I'm gonna I read read the book, I'm gonna we're gonna pester each other on some of the myths and whatnot, is a professor blonder can call in or no to do have him or No, yeah, I'd like I'd like to get him I've I've respected his work for a long time, I think his What's His blog is called with original ideas, genuine, genuine ideas. Great Blog, like he did the first work I saw on salt penetration, where he actually used a, like a chemical reaction to show the actual salt penetration. Because, you know, the problem with I tried for a long time, it di work, which you have in the book, and you and you note that you did with him. The interesting thing about di obviously is di is a much larger molecule than salt. So if you're trying to check salt penetration, you need to actually reveal the salt. And it is his work is just great. I think he's

really brilliant. He's stumbled into my website and asked me some questions. And I started asking him questions, and we just struck off a relationship and he has taught me so much his name is on the cover, undermine, it's my book that I couldn't have done it without him. He's tremendous. So

why don't we before we get into it, right? So why don't you your website, why amazing webs.com matrix, and you can see there's a there's a club, right, there's the,

the website has like 1000 free pages, but there is a pitmaster Club, which is a pay per member sub part of the site, which is a community and it's a lot of fun. And the book has 90 days free membership in the pitmaster club.

So here's what you get, when you get when you when you get the book, you get a very interesting and good, you know, representation of the various science and practical aspects, frankly, of First, what's going on with it's basically the baguette is broken into three parts, right, the first one is a heat and producing it the second is meat and kind of how that works. And the third is equipment and then it goes into recipe says pretty accurate. Yeah, so you get you get and the interesting thing about this is that the combo of you and Professor blonder, you're adding like a super kind of interesting scientific take not like boring science, but like practical like with experiments, by the way, added to kind of also years of experience and observation, which is kind of an unbeatable combo in a book like this.

They give you the insight that will help you think through cooking different foods, different thicknesses, different styles, and so you can improvise you can make it your own.

Okay, so now we're gonna go through some of the some of the stuff so one of the one of the things in the book is it there's a series of sidebars that are like myth busting. It's one of the things myth busting, not Mythbusters just myth busting. I mean, you get the copy over here how much this book cost on Amazon retail

will list for 35 and Amazon's discounting at around 21. Yeah,

bargain. You know what the good news? Is this your first book? Yeah, well, first of all, barbecue book. Yeah,

I did a bunch of books on beverage.

And there. Yeah. Because you know, your royalties are based on the on the retail, not on the? Yes, yes. So, you know, like the best is to have a book that costs 100 bucks and sells for 10. I'm not worried about it. Yeah. Well, especially not the number two book selling on Amazon. It's awesome. So a couple of things I think are interesting that I've never run the tests on you want to talk about briquette versus lump on charcoal.

Oh boy, you picked a good one to start with. That's it. I am I, you know, there's this cult about using lump charcoal, which looks like real wood, because it's made from burning chunks of wood in a low atmosphere, low oxygen atmosphere. So that carbonizes and becomes char or pure carbon, which burns really efficiently in a grill. And a lot of people think it's more natural, and we're in a area where natural food and organic food really appeals to the consumer. So it appeals to that audience strongly. But when you do that, you end up with chunks of wood of different size, different thickness, they burn unevenly. And if they're not charred all the way through, they can smoke it excessively. And you don't know what the wood is that smoking, all kinds of woods are mixed up in there. And it's quite common to find lumber and a bag of lump charcoal I have Yeah, and I've found plastic and metal and other things in there. I don't know why foreign objects get in there so often, but I'm not a huge fan of it. I want to control smoke, I want charcoal for heat and heat only. And if you use briquettes, which are made from sawdust, the clump together with some binders and some people object to the use of the binders, but they're pretty natural products, whatever that means. I mean arsenic is natural. They use cornstarch as a binder. But you have a uniform size a uniform weight, a uniform quantum of heat per briquette I whever. Chimney contains 80 of those briquettes, so you have the exact heat and temperature control with the briquettes and everything that I'm about everything I'm curious about. Everything we want to do on the grill is control, control, heat control, fire control, smoke, I have more control with briquettes, and I recommend people use them. It's constant all year round. You have one variable fewer to deal with.

I'll tell you what, for years, I've just kind of out of habit, gotten the lump. And I was convinced I don't even need to run my own test. I was convinced by reading and I'm gonna go brick it now just to everyone. Everyone who listens to the show already knows you do not mean the one that's impregnated with, with with Garneau. No,

yeah. And they actually do they use like a mineral spirits. The self starting briquettes have mineral spirits or a petroleum product in the briquette. And they do give an off smell and flavor. You can smell it a block away, you start charcoal, the best way is with a chimney. And it looks like a big coffee cannon. It's got a false bottom and you put newspaper under there are a lot of paraffin under there. And it takes about 15 minutes, and you wait for the charcoal to be completely hashed over when it's completely ashed. Over. It's burning really hot and emitting very little smoke. And I know people think charcoal is for smoke. But what is for smoke charcoals for flavor.

Yeah, I don't know. What do you think about this the because one of the things you know, when you especially when you're exposed, like in the culinary world and cooking school were in particular, a lot of Japanese chefs come over and they make a big, big deal. And it's a different purpose. So they're dealing with Yeah, they're dealing with their very high grade, extraordinarily expensive bench a ton. And for them, there's, they're doing a much different technique. First of all, they're burning like a couple of sticks at a time. They need to move super clear fire, typically indoors. No one's dumping bench a ton into a Weber. I mean, if they are they're freaking banana.

Well, they're really they're really expensive to the bench. Aton is made by almost a ritualistic process. And the the they're almost uniform in thickness. And if you click them together, they sound like wind chimes I mean, but they're carbonized perfectly. Yeah, they're beautiful, pure. They give up very little smoke, a lot of heat. They solve a lot of the problems that I see in American lump charcoal. Yeah, but

do you think they're like, if they were the same price as briquettes? Would you still go for briquettes? That's the question. In other words, is it a load of malarkey or not, you know,

venture time, if it was the same price as briquettes? I might, because it doesn't have binders and other things in it right. And the binders do create more ash. That's the one disadvantage of briquettes, you get more ash out of them

very, it's I can count on zero hands the number of times that Ash has been a problem during a single cook. It makes it harder to work out.

It's a problem for people with big green eggs.

I don't have a green a green egg. Why should use it. I'm not a big fan. I'm not

a big fan of either. The core concept that people need to learn when they're grilling outdoors is to set the grill up in two zones, a hot side and a not hot side and you've got infrared radiant heat directly below the food on the hot side and the indirect side or the non hot side is what Warm by circulating convection air and you can move the food back and forth as you need to and you are controlling heat, you're controlling the type of energy striking the meat. And in a commodity that's round, like the Big Green Egg.

Yeah, Komodo is a is the generic name for what the big green egg gets for those either don't it's a,

it's an old Japanese design, but it's a like an urn. And it's in the egg shape. And the charcoal is confined in a small round area. So it's very hard to divide it in two heat zones. So it makes a great oven. I mean, good pizza of

although no big deal. My problem with pizza, it's good for like one or two. But like at the temperatures that I normally put my pizza, it was very difficult for me to reload it and keep it going. So if you're making a couple of pizzas for your family, fantastic for a party that you're running for a couple of hours. Now. I mean, it seems to me that the big green egg was only able to sustain and even heat for a long time at lower temperatures.

Well, the other thing is, is the eggs been around for about 15 years or more. And it really hasn't changed. It's designed significantly, whereas its competitors. There's a competitor that's built in Atlanta called Primo, and it's oval shaped so with the oval shape, you can set up into zones. I like that better. So they need to do some innovation. And

yet just to get on a table right now I do almost the exact opposite style of cooking, like so I come from a kind of low temperature cvwd background. So I do almost entirely all my stuff is already cooked before I go to the to a grill and I'm using the grill mainly for finish. So I'm on I'm Hi fast and multiple in and outs tandoors two, which is like in out in out in out and out because it acts more like a rotisserie with speed going in and out. But

let me tell you about what I call redneck Suvi rednecks of eat is when you've got that grill divided in half hot side and then not so hot side, I shoot for about 200 to 25. On the indirect heat side. It's warming just by convection air. And it's like Suvi you start a big thick steak on the indirect side and gently warm it just like you wouldn't assume heat system. And once it gets up close to finish temperature say you want medium rare steak 130 to 135. You'll take it up to about 120 on the indirect side, then you lift the lid, move it over the hot side right over that pounding infrared energy and put it just on the underside and flip frequently flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, so you don't get bars of flavor. grill marks, you get even all over brown, and you've got a great sear. And when it's on the indirect side, it can be picking up smoke flavor, which is an advantage it has over real Suvi. And I've done side by side tasting. Yeah, I think they're different products anyway. Well, when I've taken identical steaks and done one and I mean, I

think the end result is just I don't think they should be. I think they're just different. I think they're different. Well,

they are when you do as I did side by side comparison, the Soviet product is significantly moister and more tender. But the Redneck Soviet if you will, the reverse here technique gets more flavor from the grill and the smoke.

Sure. I mean the issue with there are a lot of interventions you can do is to it's not about stimulus not getting this together, a lot of intervention can do so for instance, like I find most people when they do CBT they only see her on one side or the other, you get much better flavor development when you see your both before and after. When you put certain things in the bag. A lot depends. A lot of times people will pre salt with a smoothie. And if you pre salt with a smoothie, the meat ends up tasting cured because of salt penetration and get a firming effect. A lot depends on the temperature, what temperature it is when you put it on the grill afterwards, after this. There's like so many variables, it's hard to like run. I just think that there. I think what we can agree on is that the the best way to cook any piece of meat like that, especially is a low average heat input with a very high instantaneous either continuously as a rotisserie works where it's like intermittent but less often, which I think is fantastic cooking technique, or by super high energy at the at the end. I always think as you're doing the book, you agree with me I think basically wholeheartedly on this that, you know if you're going to put a seer at the beginning fine, but it needs to be at the end because otherwise across development is not there. Right? Right.

And the other thing is, is if you put pound energy into the surface of meat at the start, let's take a steak for example. What happens is, you know, people don't realize it's the hot air doesn't cook all the meat. The hot air only cooks the outside of the meat. Once the outside of the meat starts building and storing energy like a capacitor. It's the outside of the meat that cooks the inside of the meat. So if you start by searing at the beginning on a grill, you're gonna pound energy into the serve First you're gonna get a great dark surface, and then just below the surface, you're gonna get a layer of brown, then you're gonna get a layer of tan, then you're gonna get a layer of pink. And then you're finally in the center, you're gonna get a half inch or so of perfect medium rare. Whereas if you start slow in either a Suvi machine, or reverse here, you can get the color really even top to bottom. Color is also related to temperature, and you get perfectly cooked. So the root what most of us backyard weekend warriors, we cook way too hot, you're on it, cook slow, cook low, cook gentle.

Right. You know, what's interesting about crest development as well, this goes back to your flipping thing. Let's just say this. Also, I hate it for different reasons. You know, we call it Quadri asure marks where they actually do the to growth. I detest it. I've always detested it. I just think it's I don't think it even looks good. I think it looks I think it looks horrible.

We're Pavlovian trained to salivate when we see grill marks. When I see grill marks. I don't salivate. I see unfulfilled potential. I see a child that had great smarts and never got to college. I see. Good tan surface, I want to see brown surface. I want to see it dark all over. And when you flip, flip, flip every minute or two. You can get that all over even 10. Another interesting. Brown I'm sorry,

Greg on the line. Oh, hey, Professor boundary. Thanks for calling in.

Hey, guys, it's been fascinating. Listen to this, give and take. I'm Susie versus redneck.

We're gonna get into it in a minute. Just one more. One interesting thing about I don't know whether you've done any experiments on so feel free to chime in at any time. But I work a lot with extreme high intensity just like to kind of push this searing to the fastest possible what I've noticed is, frankly, that there's a certain minimum time for crust development and that you cannot develop a crust faster than a certain rate because that quote, absolutely cracked,

it takes about a minute on your average steak to get across. So flipping faster than that reduces the quality of the bark. And flipping too slow, you're gonna get gray. So I like to flip about a minute, minute and a half. And when I cook sushi, I actually like to Pat even slightly squeezed both sides into a paper towel, like pull a little bit of that moisture out and make sure I get a quick sear. And rather than steaming, right, I don't know how to do that,

ya know, I always I don't like so like when you went live time I'm working and I'm pulling out of a bag and I like to pull out of the bag a little bit in advance. I throw them on towels typically. And I think you say you're against it somewhere, Pam for cooking, but I use Pam a lot when I'm grilling to get a quick surface sheen of oil on top of something. When I'm going into the tandoori I don't

think I've mentioned pan boiling. I will often oil the meat slightly before the sear phase. But I don't know that makes a huge difference, Greg, that you've talked to me about that. What are your thoughts but

the only problem with Pam is if you get it hot, it does a good job. But if there's tam on the side of the meat, it gets kind of a little bit of a waxy mouthfeel, which I don't like, like oils. You mean it like that's the only that's the only reason otherwise, if you can actually get it hot, it's fine. But if it if it's between hot and cool, it gets a little waxy

because I find like when I'm going I know you're anti skewer tandoors it's like sometimes it's the only thing you can do like when I'm going in and out of a tandoor like spraying is the only way and if you're doing a lot of it, even with steaks, it's the only way I can guarantee I'm gonna get an even coat of oil on it really

off top a big fan of spraying I usually don't spray Pam, I usually spray different cooking oil. But I'm asking

by favor you can buy spray containers that you can fill with cooking.

I've clogged and are melted like a bunch of them. I hear there's a trick to getting them to not break on me. But like I haven't figured it out yet. So you know, you know the time at the misto has gone through so many can do you know I've

actually had similar problems. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one. You got a solution to those.

Yeah, if Professor you got anything to not have those things break on me.

Yeah, well, I mean, I hate to say this, but I actually use an all metal airbrush. Oh, nice. Like, great job. And I completely agree with most of those plastic parts. And if you get them too close to the grill, they're toast that is so you but the airbrushes are all metal these are by the right ones and they're great.

So let's let's get right to some unless we have caller calling with question. Let's get right to some myths. We do have a caller. Caller caller you're on the air.

Hey, Dave, I just want to I heard you talking about that blueberry drink you were working on a couple of weeks ago.

Ooh, do you remember what it was? It was what?

Blueberry gin who's Theano? Kind of work? Carbonated drink?

Oh, man. Yeah, I don't remember. Do you have that? What's the question though? Real quick. I gotta get really, really.

I'm just curious if you're using like dried blueberries or fresh blueberries or the drink and if it's just kind of like a typical like carbonated drink.

If I made it a couple of weeks ago, I was testing with frozen blueberries because the real ones weren't I don't have real ones yet. So I was testing with with frozen foods. And you know, when you're blending a fruit it I think the frozen stuff is fine really, especially if you go direct from frozen into the liquor so like certain fruits, you'll get interesting enzymatic action when you freeze thaw because you've ruptured a lot of the cells during the freezing process and the flavor changes quite considerably. Apples would be the one that's very clearly like that. But blueberries, you're not going to get much different. So I would you could test with frozen it's nicer to use fresh ones when they're in when they're in season, but I can't recall the recipe. I've been using shad berries recently because they're in right now. Blueberries will be in soon, too. You know what's in right now. Go outside. For those you right now. Go outside, find the closest linden tree aka basswood Linden blossoms are in now. And you can nitrile model or blend. Linden blossom drink I suggest Linden blossoms. Two ounces, Plymouth half ounce lemon, half ounce. Simple some salt. You won't regret it. Okay, perfect.

Thanks so much. All right. Thank

you. All right, back to miss on. On. So let's let's let's tackle some of the oldest and strongest ones that we're going to argue about here. All right, resting. So for those of you that have the book, it's on, what is it? Page seven here?

Let me start. And Greg, you can jump in. This is not settled science. And in fact, I've been talking to the people at Texas a&m, about hiring a grad student to do some research on this. The General Theory is is that when you take me out of a hot fire, if you let it sit for 510 15 minutes, let it rest, that the juices will be redistributed and that they will flow more evenly throughout. I'm not sure that they have run away from the fire and been distributed improperly. And I've never seen evidence that they have Greg did some really interesting tests with this. Greg, why don't you tell them about what you've done and what you've learned?

Well, I mean, first of all, first of all, I mean, in most cases, let's say you're talking about a steak. Unless you eat the whole thing in 30 or 40 seconds, it's going to rest on your plate. So the steak you eat at the beginning is going to be different than the steak you eaten five minutes later versus 15 minutes later. So almost all meats eaten partly rested. The the juiciness difference is nearly zero, I've done tests where I've sliced steaks immediately gathered up all the juices, waited 15 minutes, then slice it up, there's no difference. The difference is where it ends up whether it ends up inside the meat or it ends up in the plate, and then you kind of pop it up while you're eating. So the total amount of juice is no difference rested or not rested. I'm a big believer in not resting for actually, I like to slice my steak pretty early after it comes off the fire because I don't like the crust to SOG out and I worry about carryover when you're using a really hot fire. So I'm a fan of taking the meat off slicing it I like that charred aroma and that slightly hard crust which I rude if they wait too long. So I like to do but in terms of total juiciness, no difference. And the important thing to remember is tenderness and juiciness are not the same thing. And so the liquid that's in there which comes out is just as good whether it's in the meat or it's out of the meat so I'm not a big fan. There's one exception and that is for things like brisket. And there there is a huge advantage in waiting an hour after you pull it off the fire, wrap it up put it into a folk Ambrose and let it sit there it will absorb the juices. And that has to do with the microstructure of the brisket and the way it cooks it actually acts like a bunch of soda straws and it will pull the juices in it'll continue to cook and I do definitely believe you want to rest a big need like a brisket to steak. I'm on the opposite side. I never rested. Greg I've

been differentiating the two steps by saying meats that you're cooking to medium rare or under 150 degrees. You don't need to rest you want to serve hot not only what you were saying but I think a big part of the juiciness phenomenon is saliva. And when you put a sizzling hot steak on my plate I start to salivate I get juicy now as far as the brisket I refer to that as holding Now Greg rather than resting you're holding it just so people will overcome because of brisket is cooked to 200 203 degrees big difference from 130 degree steak

I think a lot of associate you're dealing with a problem of dealing with a problem with terminology. So you know the the way that I look at it isn't that I've never believed in this redistribution garbage. When I call garbage what do they mean redistribution but what is true and in fact what Professor your experiments show in the sidebar if you read carefully towards the end is meats tend to as they're cooling back below about Out 5452 Celsius tend to have a radical shift in their water holding capacities. And so what happens is you get reabsorption of juices that are next to meets as they cooled down. And as your experiment said, used, you'd cut a 33 ounce roast and it bled, I think three ounces when it was cut hot and two ounces, one or two ounces when it was cut hot and one, which is only one ounce it is 50% But it's only one ounce difference.

50% But when you're dealing with a piece of meat, that is 70% water

right but in a reabsorbs it so I think the key is you and as you said Professor on the thing is that it stops up the juices. I've run multiple mice, a multiple hundreds of tests where you take two pieces of me and you either force children through their zone of like absorption and this is something by the way that I thought was hogwash. This was taught to me by a guy named Bruno Casella, who is one of the you know, kind of granddaddies of low temperatures to the cooking. And he always used to say you want to ramp your cooling down slowly when it's in the bag. We're not talking about seared because he does Cook, chill and then return later. Yeah, I always thought Cook was the new chill fast. No, no, no, because well, that's the thing. That's what I always said faster, better, right from from microbial standpoint. And he always said no, you want to do a ramped chilling, and the reason is, is that the meat will reabsorb more juices. If the ramp goes down slowly, I thought he was full of garbage. And we just rent we ran the test like hundreds of times because we used to teach it in our in our low temps to the cooking class and and about 70% of the people about 70% of the time people will choose the meat that has gone through a a ramped cooling. And so then because that effect was true, I always assumed that his argument for it was true, which is that you get I never actually I don't think I've measured it but we get more reabsorption of juices as it slows down which is actually corroborated by the sidebar you guys did in the book saying that the meat reabsorbs the juices, I don't think the meat needs to be non sliced for it to reabsorb the juices. It just needs to be in proximity with the juices.

Absolutely correct. And it's it depends on the muscle group. Some muscle groups are more like sponges and other muscle groups, there's not much you can do about it, and it's not going to absorb a tremendous amount. By the way, I just want to get to that thing about rapid cooling. My believe first of all, there's only so much you can do in terms of rapid cooling and ice baths and stuff. But I do believe that if you can get hot meat into a Suvi bag and seal it, it's going to it's going to sterilize itself, if it's hot when you put it in. And and and then you have a little bit of margin to play games with how quickly you cool it or not. So I'm not as worried about the microbial issue. If it's in a nice sanitary bag, like a sushi bag,

it's super difficult to suck. You can't stuff a good vacuum on hot obviously no one no one's ever made. No one's ever made like a pressure bag or were illiterate instead of sucking the air out of the bag. You increase the pressure around a lot.

Actually, Greg just did some interesting experiments on that.

We've been doing experiments on pressure versus vacuum marinating and whether that works.

Oh, I've done a lot of experience on pressure marinating in bottles made clearly works at higher pressures you don't agree?

Well, so it's quite a high high pressure you talking

about 6070 psi.

Above 100, you're going to begin to see a difference. There's certainly it's certainly true that in a vacuum marinated the vacuum marinating, I believe is absolutely bogus. It does absolutely nothing in terms of driving things in are all the stories about for

the spoken. Have you spoken to the protein scientists on this because the professionals I've spoken to on it, I've never really played with it that much because I never cared to I don't really care about it that much. But the the what they say is that there is a win. And I don't believe that I don't know that I believe this. This is like you know how there's, there's built up knowledge over time for professionals to do it. They believe that there is a window of vacuum pressure that is good. And that a deeper vacuum than that is not advantageous and a shallower vacuum than that is not effective. So soon

as you begin to hear that you're what you're hearing is a lot of scuffing of feet, trying to find some window where they can prove it works. Most of the studies I've seen in the food literature show that the vacuum marinated and effective as in my own experiments as is I believe the theory, very high pressure. So of course as you know, high pressure pasteurization is extraordinarily effective efficacious in terms of what it does to molecules, the in between levels, 100 psi can make a difference. Your average home pump is not going to get there. And so most of the stuff that and the most of the stuff that you purchase on the house. So my belief is that the commercial ones that your average home users, it's an effective tissues Ziploc bag, you're just as well off. You can make a difference at the high levels. It only goes in so far. are given the time so I I think it works best with thin cuts. Also nothing that helps a big thick cut

like crystallization strip can obviously pick up a lot more because of the structure and your muscles,

right i mean that's an open circulatory system and you can get there in minutes and with shrimp I

mean vacuum grinding of shrimp is works. Yes, yes, but that's a

completely different structure. Yeah.

Vegetables behave differently also. Yeah, fish behave.

Vegetable. You know, the interesting thing about it cuz I do a lot of work with vacuum infusion for garnish work and cocktails and things like this. And you know, for years and years, all of the none of the marination effect happens while you're sucking the vacuum. It's when the pressure comes back in and pushes the liquid into the evacuated pores.

And there has to have been pores which were in fact empty. If the pores had liquid then nothing pulls out. Yeah, it's

important to remember that meat does not have it's not like Swiss cheese, there's not a there are no air pockets in there. It's a fully saturated sponge, if you will,

right. Oh, and to go back to juiciness, I think there's also something that's good that you're hitting on. We're so preposterously obsessed with juiciness and the loss of juice. And if things just have to be juicy enough for them to be well, let's try aging gets rid of juice,

water. That's something that I've pointed out to in my argument on on this business, we dry age and it comes in, it'll lose 15 20% or so of its juiciness sometimes. But look, you know, we hear don't poke a thermometer into the meat because it'll

differ deflate like don't use tongs,

use tongs, not a fork to flip. Let's an eight ounce filet mignon is six ounces of water. If you stick a thermometer in there, if you stick a fork in there, you might lose a teaspoon after numerous punctures. There's six ounces of water in there, you're not going to miss it. What's the

most important thing in my mind is mouthfeel. And I'm sure they've you've done experiment with putting in mono sodium phosphates, things like that. There is this. For me there is this window where you don't want pure mild water because it's a little watery on your tongue. You want a little bit of fat if you put too much water holding gels in. It feels a little bit slimy. But there is a window where it has this wonderful, anxious, meaty texture in your mouth due to the viscosity of the liquid. And that's what you have to hit. Otherwise you end up with, you know, industrial flavored meats, which tastes like they put gelatin on the inside. Now

we're getting deep down into some technical stuff. But Greg, you used a word there that I want to define for the audience because it's an important word, Maya water. You know, when we cut into a steak and these juices that we see come running out. People often call it blood. It's not blood, the blood has all been removed in the slaughtering process. Blood from the steer and a chicken and a hog is much like our blood. It's very dark red, it's almost black. It's thick, and when it comes out in oxygen, it starts to coagulate. Those thin pink juices are called mio water because they're mostly water. And they've gotten a little bit of a pink tinge from a protein called myoglobin. So I want to caution all you people who say let's collect the blood and pour it over the meat every time you call it blood somewhere in Indiana. BELL RINGS And a teenage girl becomes a vegan.

Wow, dang Indiana that's where the daxi you you're gonna become a vegan Do do you like steak? I like steak a lot. All right, there we go.

How do you like your steak really? Red or like a medium rare medium? Because I'm talking to him like he's a 12 year old he is you know the difference between medium rare

so Oh, well, I only Yeah, I mean I only ever I do exactly 55.2 degrees all the time. Well, I'm a Fahrenheit guy but that's 100 And what is that and it's 100 and medium right is 131 35 It's in that range. And we should wonder if is 57 sets we should also

point out something again for people who are not that deep into the things is the three of us seem to be the single most thing that you can do as a home cook to improve your grilling or your barbecue or your smoking or even your indoor cooking is go out and buy a $30 digital thermometer that will give you an accurate reading within five seconds. Medium rare steak is 130 to 135 steak is too expensive to overcook. Stop bringing in the steak and saying oh it kind of got away from me there. And more importantly, poultry needs to be cooked to 161 65 to be safe. And we're not talking about holding it at 155 like you might in his movie

anything you cook longer than a couple of hours as long as it's a cooked temperature. The core of the core is that that typically,

we're not when we're talking about grilling where we're not shooting you want to take it up to 160 least, and Consumer Reports did a research project a year ago in which they found out of 300 chicken breasts 90% had pathogenic bacteria, half of them had an antibiotic resistant pathogens. You You don't want to undercook poultry, you don't want to overcook steak, and a $30 digital thermometer, you want the top of the line the thermal pen for $100. Go get it. It'll read in two seconds, but you get a good one that will read in five seconds. You

do? Do you bother decontaminating it before?

I will always wash it? Yeah, absolutely. Right. Because anything you poke into meat becomes a hypodermic and it can push contaminants deep inside. I

mean, what I always tell people is there's two different things when you're dealing we have a lot of like pretty hardcore people, listeners. So you know, I make a big distinction between what you're willing to do for your family and then what you're doing if you're serving like, you know, you don't know the people or they're immunocompromised or whatever, there's like big differences. Like a lot of times if I'm going to do stuff that's not safe 100% And I have to be willing to eat it raw and separate to my family wrong. I don't I don't do it. But also, just to note for all of you Suvi jockeys out there. Don't take your incredibly expensive hypodermic thermocouple anywhere near the grill they have the the potting compound that they use inside of those hypodermic needles is sensitive to heat and will die if it overheats. And then your $80 probe is in the garbage. Well, you can still stick it in the meat though. Yeah, but I've lost more than five, like trying to when I'm doing classes, and I'm trying to show temperature rise in a steak while I'm flipping it. So if they actually leave it in a grill, or God forbid, use it as a frying thermometer.