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

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

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

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

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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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Today's program was brought to you by the Christmas tree Farmers Association of New York partnering with grownyc in a pilot project to make farm fresh trees and reaps available at Green markets. For more information visit Christmas trees and why.org I'm Greg Blaze

host of cutting the curd you're listening to heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritage radio network.org for 1000s more.

Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the heritage radio network from Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, joined every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 or so. joined as usual with Anastasia hammer Lopez how to assess and we got Rebecca live tweeting over there in the booth with Jack Ainsley. Jackie molecule's our intrepid engineer. How you doing guys?

Sorry, we're good. I can't believe we're so on time today. It's that's miraculous. Well,

in order to get me here on time, you have to get me flying in from the passport office in Stamford, Connecticut, we can talk about in a bit but special guest in the studio today. Harold McGee That's right. That's right. He's here. I didn't give you any advance notice, because I only want diehard fans to be able to call in to 718-497-2128. That is, and I will say it at a reasonable pace this time. 718-497-2128 is that even right? Because I can't do it slowly. Is that right? Anyway? So calling your questions to Harold McGee. I mean, probably you should keep them to a kind of a cooking related kind of a theme. But you know, it's up to you to he's pretty open. Harold is in town because he is going to do a talk at the Museum of food and drink lab on 62. Bayard street this week on Thursday, right? Thursday, what what time is 630? And I believe you can still I don't know if it's probably sold out. But you know, don't listen to me go on the on the Mossad website and look up. I think under the program you can see and what are you going to be talking about?

Stuff. Peter Kim and I Peter, the director of the museum and I are gonna just kind of chat about flavor and then take questions from the audience.

So flavor, you're for it or against it.

Mostly for it.

Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting. There is an anti flavor thing going on. Now. It's kind of like the the that goes part of the theme of sugar, salt, fat, whatever, whatever that is. Plus, you know the Doritos Fact basically, chiding, chiding corporations on their pernicious inclusion of those addicting flavors into food. So you're not you're not part of the anti flavor.

No, it kind of makes sense, doesn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean if I was a corporation, which I guess does we are kind of a corporate we have more than LLC. We're not mega corporation now. Like we're not we're not hated yet

for our you are an LLC.

Well me me personally, I have a personal taxes never say we're going to acts as an LLC. Yeah, yeah but we're not like a mega corporation with people people can hate us for that yet we don't have like a corporate hegemony yet you haven't reached to kind of that Monsanto level yet, right? We're not you know mucking about with whole cultures yet the so anyways, so the wars where they're going with this so yeah, so you I mean obviously corporations want to make stuff tastes better for people I mean seems obvious.

Yes, yes. Yeah. And you would expect them to do that. So?

No. All right. I have a question and actually that I know you have thoughts on from last week unless you have something super pressing. I had last.

Twitter questions for you.

Alright, let me Let me tackle this one. This is in from actually family and remind Brady Huggett just wanted us to comment on the whole Aqua best. AKA best is that the name of the corporation the salmon, the genetically engineered salmon that just got approved and the people who vow to vow to squash it. Do you want to talk about that? Or do you want to leave it on talked about? Do you not want to dip your toes into the water of genetically engineered salmon? Perhaps I should tell people what it is first. It's a salmon that's been I believe. They've basically taken and made it's I don't know whether it's an addition or a deletion of a gene. I haven't researched

it enough in addition from fish called the pote.

The pout Yes. Wow, that's a nice thing. Does it look pouty? The fish isn't named for its look,

I've never behold in a pot pout.

Yeah. Well, it's like, kind of the the poorly named, it's pronounced crappy but written crappy. Which, why would you want to name a fish? Crappy anyway? So it grows, it grows faster has better feed conversion ratio than ordinary salmon. Right? So what are your thoughts on it?

My thought is, I've been following this now for what 15 years or something like that, that they first put the gene in the fish and began to talk about this. I'm amazed that they're still able to have a proposal in front of the FDA. And I'm a kind of fascinated by standard. I don't have strong feelings one way or the other. I think it's important to make sure that fish that have been engineered don't get out into the world at large. I can't see how a fish engineered in this particular way is going to be a problem for human consumers. So I want to see what happens.

Yeah, there's been a lot of there's been a lot of bad information out there on it. The you know, one of the interesting things is that the fear is that you're going to have a an American Crieff, one of the fears is that you're going to have like an American crayfish kind of situation where the salmon get out there start interbreeding with, you know, the regular salmon, and then all hell breaks loose and you get these fast growing salmon that are clogging up the I guess this is one of the you know, we lose? Yeah, right. I mean, that's the that's the fear. So for those of you that don't know, what happened is they these fish are sterile, they're only releasing one sex of fish, female and those females are leaves female and those females are sterile, so they're not able to have baby fish. Right. So that's supposed to get around the thing started was last time you saw Jurassic Park, it's been a long time. Those were also supposed to be sterile right? Now remember, this is a movie written from a book by a guy who's now dead. But does anyone remember how it is that the Jurassic Park anyone Harold you remember that Rebecca Jack? Remember how that worked? It's been too long. Maybe someone can tweet in how in a fictional account the sterility of the 20th source Rex or whatever it was or not velociraptor? I believe it was in this case, how that was how that life will find a way as Jeff Goldblum said in one of his more irritating roles. Anyways, the point is, is that they're engineered to be sterile and the some of the people who are against this fish basically are they point out a an a state study that was done that proves proves that this fish can actually interbreed with regular fish and so the fish was supplied to them. By the, you know, by the company that makes them, however, they supply them with genetically engineered yet non sterile fish specifically for this study. So the study, the study was to show that if you didn't have a sterilized fish, could it interbreed with the regular wild population of brown trout and salmon? Because they're worried about the brown trout? Remember, these were being raised inland? So the question is, is can this salmon hybridize with inland, like lake and river, brown trout? Should it like make it out into the thing? And they found out that yes, it can, if they were, if they were not sterilized, and I'll be it only poorly even in that case, and yet this is, you know, touted as being you know, how you know, that there's, you know, there's that somehow that's possible for the ones that they're going to raise to go out into the wild. Do you read this stuff?

Yes, yes. Yeah. So it seems pretty ironclad but I'm glad that there are people out there, you know, pushing making sure for the rest of us.

Yeah, yeah. But But what I don't like is just like the false like the falseness of leaving out important details Yes. Like the fish that they tested that could interbreed only poorly, what actually weren't the fish that people are actually raising? They were they were they had a you know, whatever, whatever. It's just it people like it's very hard to get, you know, any good information on either side. All right. So you want to do some Twitter questions?

Alright, so not milk king wants to know do you have any thoughts? Or info on dry? Aging Turkey best duck I had was that emp, and it was age for a week. That's a different meat obviously by curious Oh,

but I like how I like how nut milk King is by curious that's great. The I never ate in Turkey which was by the way like I messed up the Thanksgiving turkey a little bit was still delicious, but I did mess it up a little bit. We could talk about that later. It would they were heritage breed Turks, Turkey Turks, turkeys. And they were I thought they were delicious. Did you try it? Are you too busy? It was good. Right? They're good. Did you try the coffee and the breast?

No,

you didn't try the coffee? No. Coffee was good. Anyway, I can't feed the legs out this year. It well the problem is is that it was very hard to arrange them into a bird and I didn't have a bag big enough to do the the breasts and so like I tried to do a traditional cooking technique on the breast next year if I do a similar thing, which I probably will I'm going to have to bust out the meat glue. I just didn't have the meat glue with me where I was. I didn't I didn't adequately plan. I thought that just giving it time would but I didn't adequately plan my equipment regimen to do it that my bad. still delicious. Finished in the tender. Oh, yeah, I did one in the tandoor. And I didn't end up deep frying the other one end up doing the other one in the oven. But yeah, the tandoor. Okay, here's the issue with the tandoor. Right. So I had the bird around the stuffing plug right with uncooked breast but the stuffing plug was hot. So I was hoping that the stuffing plug would cook the breast meat from the inside out while I was going into the tender. Now, the tandoor goes back to you know what we've said it many times is that you want very high instantaneous heat input but low average heat input. So the way you do it tandoors in and out in and out in and out and in and out and in and out. You know, but the cool thing is when it's in it's getting hit from all sides at once. So I bought a pair of cheap vise grips and vise grip on the bottom of this put the turkey on wrapped it with the stuffing plug tied it real tight so it look kind of like a turkey football. It didn't have any bones in it except for the well the bones in the coffee. They were already cooked out though right but the breast area had no bones. Then a bowl of tin foil to separate it from the next thing and then a layer of tinfoil in the vise grip the tin foil to stop the the the intense heat from the live coals from burning the bottom side of the bird. But there was just so much grease that and the turkey was so large relative to society the size of the tandoor and I so stoked to Tandoor with coals that it was like it was like a freaking Disco Inferno inside of the tandoori. And then when I I left it in there, so usually like when you're cooking in a tandoor and you start getting flames off of like whatever grease is in the thing. You You Can you close the bottom, like air vent a little bit you damp that up a little bit and then you put the lid back on the top except for the little place where the skewers are coming out. And that deprives the enough oxygen usually that you don't get enough like large kind of a flames but not when you have this much grease pouring off of the turkey. So then I pulled the turkey you know I had it actually to skewers through it right so I could do a double grip so that the trick to any Having a tandoor is having a place you can put the skewers to rest in between your firings of the of the tandoor. That's not like the ground or something outside. I have a spiral staircase next to the tandoor. So I was like putting them on the spiral staircase. But I went to go readjust and it poured hot grease like all over my finger, you can still see the wrinkle marks in my finger from what used to kind of be a normal fingers. That was unpleasant, but it tasted good. It was good. I would do it again. I'll be it a little bit differently. I'd dry the bird more beforehand, and maybe, maybe not. Maybe cook it all low temp with the bones in which is anathema. Normally, I gotta figure it out, but I would definitely tender it again because I like the flavor of the tandoor. Yeah, yeah,

I have ambitions. To start tendering.

You should you need to own a tandoor. Yeah, first of all, you have a house in a backyard. Yes. So, Tandoor, you know, I'm sure there's some place in in San Francisco that sells them but the place in New Jersey ships and the problem is that the shipping charges a little bit high, I think, Hey, I gotta get a tandoor tandoors the best. I love the tandoor hashtag vertical grilling. You know, if the only question is is, so like, when I do stakes, I put the, you know, those like crappy fish grills that you can buy or veggie grills that you can buy. I have a bunch of those. And those usually have a place where you can like where it folds down and you put a clip over it to hold it down. And so that's a perfect place to shove a skewer through. So typically what I'll do is I'll throw like steak or anything like that, you know, pieces that can't be secured easily, and put them in the basket and then put them in the tandoor suspended over another skewer and close it. And so that's the way you do things that aren't normally tandoori. Yeah, yeah, that's how you vertically grill things like that. But that doesn't answer the question. dry aging turkey. What do you think?

You got to play with it? I mean, I've never done it before. So I would do it once. Maybe plan on doing it for longer than is probably ideal. And see if that's the case, maybe check it out as it's going. But I'd hang on to it for, I don't know, 10 days, something like that.

Would you? Would you solve that ahead of time to stop any sort of anything that's kind of growing on the outside?

I don't know. Maybe wipe it with vinegar. Every once in a while. Trying to clean out everything. Yeah, yeah, just keep it clean.

What about? What about choosing a bird that whose meat is inherently darker? Is that going to be good? Like a heritage style bird? As opposed to a buttery ball?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, Ben, butter balls have other stuff. floating around in their

diet. Steel and oil? Yes. Do they actually put butter in a butter ball?

No idea. No idea. I haven't looked at the ingredient list. Recently.

You don't I bet you has tried to dry aged turkey. Johnny hunter. I bet you Johnny hunters tried to dry aged turkey. Maybe he'll write in all right. All right. What else? What else we got what else we got? Actually, I got a call. Oh, caller caller you're on the air.

There. This is Jeffrey from custom mesa. Better now that I have the sweet Jackie molecules ringtone on my phone.

That means that that means is member will play the ringtone maybe at the break.

Separate when people call an answer at the right time and instinctively say, Jackie molecules hang up, because they think they have the wrong number.

Well, do you want to talk to those people? Do you want to talk? Do you want to talk to them fairly

now? It works out? Yes. Perfect. I call them about blanching french fries for a shorter amount of time. Okay, a couple of weeks ago, when I was following up with that. It seemed as though so I tried a few different times for the Blanche and basically pushed to the lowest amount of time or sorry, the most amount of time I could get without them starting to all shatter.

Right. So the theory here was, by the way, the call was about, you know, when you Blanchett as long as you know I usually do to get the best textural effect in the french fry. The potatoes are so loose that they're really beat up by the end. And so then like kind of getting around, let's go ahead.

Right. So yeah, so about nine or 10 minutes, was sort of the furthest I could go without, you know, a large amount of them shattering. And so in about 10 minutes, it seemed like the starch was pretty well to Latinised had a decent salt penetration. So then I tried a few different oven temperatures, and had kind of some interesting results that 300 was pretty pretty consistently got like Hollow fry right? Up at 350. They're a little more sort of dense, but the people that were kind of blind trying them, they liked the 350. And then 400 was my favorite. No hollow fry, pretty, pretty soft, kind of good, you know, pillowy potato texture. So 400 seemed to be the way to go for, you know, another 10 minutes before frying

was the 400 was the 400 less time than the than the three and change that had the hollow fry?

No, they were all I did them all for 10 minutes just to see what what would happen with that. So that was that was curious.

Strange, right? So I mean, Harold, you remember, like the the problem of French fries, obviously, is one of breaking the starch first, to get the texture that you want, but also moisture control, both throughout the fry and at the crisp surface, right. And usually, hollow fry is the result of over drying, at least in my theory, it's an overdrive and so you lose kind of the substance that's on the inside of the fry. And it basically just had this crisp outside. But it's kind of odd, right that you would have hollow fry at three and change or 300 or 300 or 10 minutes and then not hollow fry. You know what I bet you your case hardening it?

Is there like a dehydration effect that's happening if the lower temperature?

Well, I think the hot? Yeah, I think the lower temperatures probably more effectively dehydrating the entire fry. And you must be getting some sort of case hardening effect at the higher temperature. And you're probably also you're probably evacuating moisture. It's at such a high rate. At the surface. It may be you're not saying it's like searing. Where is the fake ceiling of the crust? I'm saying you're probably doing something to dense up the surface of the fry. There's got to be right. So one explanation I can think of. Right?

Hmm, yeah. So am I am I dumb or, or just masochistic? After I go through all these steps to make a friend try adding an additional step? And that feels normal?

No, it shouldn't? No, you shouldn't be Nah, it's good. It's good. I mean, it's first of all, like, there isn't normally a drying step anyway. So you're just having that drying step take place in an oven. Right? And by the way, like, this is how everything in the world happens through observation. Like if you had asked us, I presume, Harold, I mean, if you had asked us what would happen when you jack the temperature, I would have said more hollow fry more oil. That's what I would have said, you know, not knowing but this is why it's very hard to answer questions from a theoretical basis, and you need to actually do the tests and pay attention to what goes on. You know, this is why you should always be aware of people who tell you that they have the answer to something unless they actually run this specific test that they're telling you about. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. So what about I was wondering, and then about getting better salt penetration. With that limited Blanche time? Would it affect the way that the pectin X is able to affect you know, the starch and everything if I added salt to that bath? I do that, you know, the hour long trek the next Ultra?

Well, I'm very serious. I don't know how much the salt is going to affect the enzyme but just on a theoretical basis. I am suspicious that in the absence of the high blanching temperature that you're going to get too much more penetration then you will just by upping the salt content in your blanch water What do you think?

Yeah, I'm I'm not actually actually clear on this part of the system.

Oh, so they so they like the real like hardcore french fry technique right is so you know, how the modernist folk they do the ultrasonic bath to mess with the surface of the fry. So like the one that you know we do is, is soak it in, in a packed and X bath with which, you know, kind of disrupts the surface of the dry but and that's our first step prior to so you know how like you you rinse the starch off normally in water you soak it some people soak it for a long time to to extract excess soluble sugar from the potato. Then you do your water blanch step with salt to put salt in and do the pre cook on the starch. Then the question of drying which we just addressed, then fry one then sometimes freeze depending on what you want and then fry to right this is how you make a french fry. This is how God would make a french fry. Anyway, so the point is that on the enzyme so thing I don't Don't think for instance just soaking up potato and salty water, I don't think is going to get appreciably more penetration than just upping the salt content of the hot blanch water because so much faster the hot blanch Well, I would just jack the salt level in the bland. Yeah,

I'll give that a try. And thanks to your recommendation, I will now be finishing fries in an outdoor Cajun fryer.

Oh yeah, let us know how to get some fireworks.

And they I gotta give a kind of props to them. I called their owner. The night before Thanksgiving, we had that thing delivered. We're setting it up. And it wasn't. It wasn't lighting. So I called them we're in California, I called them like 715 their time to the they just give like the home phone number for emergencies. I called the owner. And he answered the phone kind of talked me through being in the regulator on the tank and and got it working. So it worked. Well. It worked well prior to anybody. It worked

well. Yeah. Nice. That's beautiful. Yeah. Good to know. Thanks for that. And you can buy that you can buy the Cajun fryer at Bass Pro Shops, although we're not affiliated.

Come on now. You know. I got a bunch of questions in the chat for Harold if we want to start getting some of those. All right. Yeah. All right. We'll go with the most recent one first habitus interested in hearing Harold's thoughts on the bean liquid egg substitute aquafaba.

Right. Yeah, I've gotten more emails about that than anything I can remember, at least in recent years. So it's, it's the liquid from a can of chickpeas, whips up into a nice Marang. And as far as I can tell, of course, there's protein in there and starch. But apparently, there's also a fair amount of SIP ponens, which are molecules that are good at foaming, so that you've got stuff in there that that wants to foam and then stuff in there that's going to stabilize the foam like the dissolved starch and protein. And the combination is this unexpected boon to vegan Marang makers.

So for those of you that don't are not aware of the kind of genesis of on food and cooking, Harold's, you know, first book, it was as a result of him studying the fart inducing principle of beings. And so as part of that this opponents as well, or is that simply the polysaccharides that you don't digest it? Bacteria? I

don't think so. ponens or flexibler? genic? No,

well, that's a fantastic word. That's a very good word. That's a fantastic word. That word says, Yeah, even the Stasi likes that word. And that's so unusual for her to like a word. She has like her happy status face on a situation like this.

So that's got some more in here. We should get to Alright, let's see. Our old friend Elliot. Hey, Harold, can you talk about fermentation of herbs stems and milk, herbs stem sorry.

Herb stems in milk,

which which herb?

He's here, he can probably answer that. I

know for a fact that Harold, you've done work with amaranth stocks, but not in milk?

No, no. And there the aim is to make something as stinky as possible. I think that that's not likely with with this one. mean in milk, you would get a lactic fermentation. Maybe the herb stems would be carrying naturally occurring lactic bacilli like to kotkai into the milk and so they might help seed it but I don't see what what the connection would be between the herbs stones in the milk.

I bet you that's a word status hates lactic caca? The Well,

one for one.

Yeah, well, I mean, some, like effects depends on the herb like cartoons. We'll break it right. I mean, it's like depends on

Yeah, yeah, that's true. But I'm thinking herbs, herbs that I would think of would be more like, you know, parsley and things like that. And I'm not sure that they have any active active principles and cartoons. Yeah, they've got a lot of cannon. I think that's what what causes the coagulation when you're doing them up long.

Well, is that that is well, what's the what's the rendering thing in the rest of the fissile family all about? That's in the flour. Yeah, cartoon flour. Yeah. And that's a separate that's an actual enzyme.

That's right. Yeah, that is almost identical to the enzyme and calf stomach. Yeah, crazily enough.

PSL you people to hate genetically modified food all your cheese is made with genetically modified rennet. Caller caller you're on the air.

Hey, Dave. had a question for you on the turkey in a bag some Thanksgiving. We had the debate and didn't know it was started out. We thought it was a cheap game. You know when you put the turkey in a bag,

the oven bags

kind of like large I don't know it's a it's a baking back all the moisture in that and then we concluded that it might be like a poor man's Combi and we can't decide what is going on inside the

bag. Okay, well, every and Harold will you know can you know? Every 20 years or so 20 to 30 years as far as I can tell bad cooking makes a big a renaissance. So a bad cook paper bad cooking was big when I was a kid. It's not paper anymore but bad cooking in by way bad cooking, not like Suvi bag we're talking bag like a large on puppy yard style bag is it is big. Now. I have a book from the early early 1900s from Alexis Sawyer is like son or grandson on paper bag cookery. Back when paper first started to be regular paper first started to be non toxic so that it could be used in kind of cooking. So this is something that comes back again and again. And usually things that come back again and again have some merit, I would say although I don't necessarily know what that merit is. Have you thought about this at all? Harold?

Well, I actually look at it the other way around. If things kind of come and go, they go because they don't work so well. Right? And then come back because people forget.

Well, you know, the specifically the question here is, is like is it like a poor man's copy? Right? Like, are you keeping the steam? And I don't know, like I used to mean the paperback chicken that I used to make when I was a kid. My memory of it is that it was good. It doesn't steam the bird in the sense that it the skin gets crispy. So it's not, this

is a different kind of background. Yes, we're talking about this one's much more plasticky and why have a My mother in law loves doing it. And I have to keep convincing her if you're gonna do the bag that was opened up so the skate can't get crispy. Because while the turkeys cook their skins never. I think we're missing the best part.

I think this is the I think it's nylon that these baking bags are made out of something like that some some polymer that can take high temperatures. And I think the thing about them is that they you are essentially, because they are impermeable, unlike paper, you are trapping the steam and you're not getting evaporative cooling so that you're essentially steaming or boiling the bird. You do get I think, some radiant heat through the bag so that it can kind of crisp up in spots. But because the humidity is so high in there, it's it's limited.

So they're not they don't You don't poke holes in this bag.

No, you're I think you are supposed to leave the end that you tie off not not tied off tightly. So you are you do lose some but but I think the the effect of surface area of whatever opening there is is so small that it's negative.

So you don't have the you don't have the ability to lose enough moisture to have a what they call high relative humidity, whatever that means at elevated temperature, but elevate it to the point where it's browning efficiently. Yeah, yeah, that would be unfortunate. Yes. I know you can cook a paper bag chicken and have the chicken be crispy. But you have to use the old school big paper bags. And you know, you had to put plenty of butter on the skin of the chicken. Yeah, but again, maybe I was just wrong. Maybe you're asking me to remember what stuff tasted like when I was like eight nine years old. That was like you know 10 That's when I was you know doing my paper bag work. And it's true that using the modern silicone sealed parchment paper on puppy oldstyle you get basically exclusively steamed results out of things like fish do you like on puppy out cooking in general or do you hate it?

I don't I mean, I like it. If I want to cook fish and not have my house smell fishy. So I'll cook it on puppy on and then let it cool down so that you know it doesn't the moment I open it up it doesn't just show fill the space with fish smell.

Well what about the idea of of that like, you know how like when you make an excellent like dashi it's all about that moment that aromatic reveal Yeah, you like that aspect of the puppy. Oh yeah,

yeah, that's that's nice in somebody's somebody else's house or

what do you like? What do you think styles about your house filled with fish? No, no, no, you don't. I did test that that oil overheated fish oil is the worst as the worst that stuff never except for when I'm when I'm doing sardines in a pan. I don't mind it, because it's just something so I mean, I don't like it the next day, but there's just something so marvelous about sardines cooked on a high heat.

Yes, yes. Yeah. And I have my favorite places to go to get that from Cisco. Really? What is it? Well, actually, it used to be in Konto, which is now closed, but Cox comb does sardines also. So Chris Konstantinos plays nice. Yeah,

I'm sure he can put the sardine up. Oh, yeah. Stats. What are your thoughts on sardines? I like them a lot. Do you also like canned sardines. Okay, James Beard, right. Among many. He had many faults. One was preferred. Electric not talking to induction and talking crappy resistance electric range tops to gas. True story. also thought that canned sardines were far superior to fresh sardines. Now, he's from the Pacific Northwest. Right. So you presumably he could get good sardines. So this is just craziness. Like I think that they're not the same product. I don't think they should be compared. I don't think that they're similar. Not only do I think that they're like, like different. I think they are dissimilar products.

Yeah, yeah. No, I agree. I agree. I love canned sardines. And I I love aged canned sardines. You know you can get vintage a Yeah, we we've tasted them together. Yeah. Yeah. But you're right. You couldn't do that to a sardine sardine. And, yeah, they're there. They're just they offer different experiences.

Do you pick out the weird? Calcium boneless from the cancer danger? You know? That's part of the part of the deal. Yeah, you and Brooke are both what about you stuff? Do you like that? Do you mind that? That you don't I'm talking about the backbone. The back. You ever do you put do you pull the backbone out of your canned sardines. Are you the fancy folk that by the skinless boneless I don't know. I have to. I don't like I don't texturally because it's gritty. It's not that it's crunchy. It's gritty. Because the bones are dissolved and all you have are these little kind of calcium bit let's not a fan of the calcium bit lit. What about anyway in the engineering booth? Rebecca, Jackie, we're gonna weigh in on the calcium bit. Let's forgive nothing. You guys don't eat sardines. Don't like sardines. I like sardines. Wait, Rebecca, you don't like Sorry. You don't like any form of sardine? I don't think so. Maybe. See? What No, no, no, I don't even like that. That. That is an anchovy. Ah, I knew it. As soon as I was said I knew it was an anchovy. I apologize. Right. So, so Okay, so you're saying you don't like anchovies either? Not particularly.

I don't like little slimy fish. Oh, oh,

she also doesn't like bubbly water.

Spoiled but here's my point. A good anchovy is not slimy. Like, look, here's what you don't want to like to start your life in anchovies. Go buy a can of salted anchovies. Just straight salted anchovies. Maybe you should make me some stars. You like anchovy pasta? Yeah. Yeah. Do you make it with the with the crappy canned stuff or do you make it with the with the with the salted stuff? I make it with the salted stuff. You may go to solve stuff due to here's another thing. The White anchovy that like you know, like the cured White anchovy, they are not the same thing. I do not like people saying that they are better than salted or salted and and then oiled anchovies. I think that they are different. And frankly, I'm a weirdo. But I could eat more. Salted anchovy than I could. The cured. I don't know. Everyone loves them. I love them. They're good. But they're not. They're not the same product. They shouldn't be compared. Yeah, you agree? Yeah. Yeah.

No. That's wonderful bounty this cornucopia of different fish products. Yeah, they're all different.

Yeah, yeah. Eight people. Is cod the same as salted cod. No, no, they're different. They're different products.

And another question here in the chat room, what do you got? What are some dates and easy one? What are some Dave and Harold's holiday gift suggestions for an aspiring home cook already have a circulator and a good set of pots and pans. Hmm, longtime listener first time question.

Well, if you have money you should wait for us to release the centrifuge bomb. Exactly. Well, that was the setup. I set up but what do you think what do you what do you like to give people probably food related

a hyper hypodermic needle style thermometer. For rebels you can stick it into any size piece of meat or fish You don't see a hole afterwards. And you can check like 30 different places in 30 seconds.

Right. And by the way, so there are things on the market that are referred to as hypodermic that really are not.

Yes, yes.

Yeah, yeah, it looks like he could put a hole in you without leaving too much of a mark, then that is that's what you're looking for. However, as I don't know whether I've said this on the air, or whether I've just said it to other people. Don't ever use that thing as a candy thermometer. Don't ever put that into deep fryer oil, because you will ruin it. Yeah, very quickly. And they're not cheap. They're cheaper than they used to be. They're under 100 bucks now. Oh, yeah. Yeah, like between 50 and 75 days. Yeah. But then you're still into it for a thermocouple thermometer. So you need to buy the probe and that thermometer or did they come back and you couldn't get

the package but the probe is plugin so you can buy replacements you can buy buy one on a wire and all kinds of nice things. You will

be tempted to use it as a candy thermometer. Don't you will be tempted to test the temperature of your deep fryer with that do not. Do not do that. I've ruined more than two. Yeah, all right. That's good.

I have to shout out Renee Casper, who just made a donation looks like all the way from Norway. Norway. That's awesome.

Like that. Never been in Norway.

I mean, neither Me neither. I'd love to.

Been to Sweden. Norway. never really been to Denmark.

Yeah, I've just been to Copenhagen.

You're like that doesn't count. back to Jersey of Denmark. Just kidding.

All right. Good holiday question here unless you have one. Go chat room is live here. So Harold and Dave, can you advise on the minimum AV the minimum ABV for aged eggnog? The Dr. Lancefield recipe seems to work out at about 15% ABV, but other recipes on the web aim for 20.

Well, a 15 is good. 20 is going to be fine. I mean, how low do you want it to go? That's the question. Right? Yeah. I mean, that that one's the one from the Rockefeller right, the one that the one that is being quoted as the one from the Rockefeller University. That's the Lancefield one, the one that they actually did a challenge test on. So I think that's the one that they were referring to, so that this doctor at the Rockefellers she had this eggnog recipe and they made it every year and someone was like a man and saved my mind they're like, Well, this is what we do for a living. And so they did a challenge test and they looked at the kill rate and how long it took to kill off the stuff with a certain level of of initial bacterial load and a certain abv and etc etc. And it was you know, on the order if it was aged for I forget what it was like a couple of weeks that it you know, become safer and safer. Same like mayonnaise same like using eggs in any cocktail where you're not actually killing the salmonella quickly now. So the answer is that there are two separate problems one what is the ABV required to maintain bacterial static? The bad bacteria stack nature of it right? And to like at a given ABV, how long does it take to become safe if it were contaminated at the get go? And those seem to me to be two different things right. So you could say I know that within three weeks or two weeks or whatever it is. 15% ABV is safe. However, once decontaminated, perhaps it could be diluted down to 10 or 12 or less. We think beer doesn't get nasty contaminants in it, it gets it can get ruined. You can have yeast growth, you can have all these other things, but you're not getting anything that will kill you in it and that is down. That's much lower. I think even if you were to crack an egg into beer, as long as it was pre pasteurized, I don't think salmonella can grow at those alcohol present. What do you think?

I'd want to check out the

check theorizing in my head. But

yeah, well, I don't know the beer is different because there's beers pretty lean by comparisons carbon. Yeah, yeah. That to both which I think work against bacteria in a way that an eggnog mix does not right. All that protein, all that fat? higher, lower acidity. So I think you'd want to Yeah, if I what I don't understand though, is why why go lower

than 15? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Especially because the other recipe cited are higher. Yeah, going higher is definitely going to make you safer. Yep. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. Maybe it's just always wanting to play with with the border. Right. See, see how far you can go. But I'm not I just don't think that I mean, alcohol contribute adds to the flavor of the drink. And I think if you go too low, it's gonna be like a milkshake, right?

Yes. Now you've put Kelly's song into my head that got the milkshake song going through my head, which is not a fortune. I guess it's fine stuff like that song. You've always hated it, or just now that I'm mentioning it. Wow. Wow. All right, so why don't you give us a Twitter question so they don't feel left out here.