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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Hello, and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, middle middle of the road.

You kind of split the difference there. Yeah. What do you think? Pretty good.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Most people like the loud crazy one. Yeah, but but a lot of people said they like kind of like, you know, like mixing it up. I think middle of the road might be fine. You know,

things generally people like surprises. Oh, you know,

except me hate surprises you hate nines. Not sure. I mean, I don't know. I mean, how was the last time you were truly surprised by something Jack?

That's a great question. I can't think of an answer off the top of my head

you think about it. We'll get back to it later in the show. Meanwhile, call your questions in to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 Got to miss Tarski the hammer Lopez next to me here with her the Jedi wow so yours Oh god stars open up your machete here on airs here

especially the last time I was surprised is right now.

So Claire sent us this bodice is the Jedi which for those of you that haven't been following the jetty Chronicles tele soccer open is a vegetable spiralizer now it looks like kind of like a an hourglass. It's got two sets of teeth, two sets of the jetty teeth in different ones fine and one's course and it's got a little pusher so that you don't get your fingers sliced off in the jetty now stars want you to go ahead and shove a cucumber into your video. I'm going to use a zucchini and start small. She's now twisting it like a pencil sharpener. Yeah,

yeah. Now good sound guys.

Yeah, yeah, well, we are fully experts. We see that sound experts for you. Yeah, I mean, it tastes like tastes like but look, it's good. That doesn't get that. Well, stars is trying to avoid the middle part the seeds here. I mean, I could see these being used in a salad. I could see

guys it tastes just like spaghetti.

It's amazing. It's like you use starch. It's amazing. The cucumber is kind of cool. Let me see. I bet you the texture oh, maybe we should appeal At first their styles. Let me see Yeah. All right. Let's see right here this is this is a sampling the cucumber the jetty look,

it's not a bad product, although that's not a bad

product as a topping or something. It's nice yeah. I mean I wouldn't cook that zucchini because it's gonna turn into like a massive mess she fries it which makes no sense because it's a sponge

so that's good yeah for the cucumber pray it's good but look at the dog gets compacted

yeah there's there's a bunch of stuff compacted into stuff his machete here she better get out all right so what grids good roofs we don't have a carrot? No I didn't know maybe they have a carrot in the kitchen they can bring to us later in the show and we can spiral that would be good tapping. Let's try the carrot. Yeah, I mean, obviously like, you know, I got Asian on the mic, icon? Yeah. Oh caller you're on the air.

I Dave, Sasha and Jack and everybody. My name is Bradley. I'm from San Francisco and I had a couple of questions for you. I found this podcast about seven weeks ago, and I'm unemployed. So I've listened to 104 episodes in the last seven weeks.

Oh my god, get a job that you don't want to listen to that much cooking issues. It's gonna rot your brain.

Well, I'm helping a refurb do have some family handyman projects. So I'm listening to it while working. But I my family does this thing called meat fest every year for my mom and my uncle's birthday. They were born on the same day and we get a whole ribeye, and you grill it all up. And so my goal this year was to build a dry curing chamber and drage ribeye that I got. And I'd seen online that like I'd go pound salt that they put, they had suggested using a tray of rock salt, sea salt down below, as like a desiccant and I was wondering if as long as my humidity and temperature controlled if that's helpful or if that is just a kind of a bad way of keeping MidCity relatively the same rabbit process?

Yeah, that's great question. So yeah, as far as my understanding of it is the salt is more for like you say stability of the humidity right because it's like the salt is going to add saturation is going to want to maintain a specific humidity I'd always read so if you the first time I ever read this was you know decades ago and now outdated book What's it called the sausage. The sausage maker something was was by write tech coutaz, which was made it's got the books gotta be from the 80s or something like that. But he was the first one I saw recommending the salt in the curing in the in the aging or curing chamber as a as a humidity modifier. But my memory serves me he actually has a huge amounts of salt and some water there so that you know, you could evaporate water into it or absorb it as needed, right. So it would only be a desiccant until it turns completely to liquid if you are in an extremely humid environment. Otherwise it could be used the other way. It's it just keeps something at the same relative humidity. I forget what it is because it's been a long time. But it's somewhere in the mid 70s I think is that right? Have you looked it up recently? It's like 77% or something like this?

Yeah, I felt like 80 to 85 was what I saw.

So yeah, I mean, some people just believe in the mystical power of salt in the aging room period. So David Burke, you know, when he years ago did his Steakhouse in Chicago, did an ageing room. And he literally tiled on the walls, giant blocks of salt, which were pretty impressive, I have to say and I think he was serving stuff on that, you know, and that Himalayan salt block stuff. Yeah. Yeah, and it was pretty impressive. I don't know if it made a bit of difference or not because you know, obviously you know, there was no side by sides but it was impressive look cool.

So so my setup is I've got a 4.4 cubic foot Kenmore mini fridge that I've I'm rewiring to include a temperature controller and I'm taking out the thermostat for the fridge and rewiring it to an Arduino along with a fan and humidifier but so if I have like that kind of setup, and they're all you know, you know maintaining within normal range, this all is like a fun extra but not necessarily something that I need.

Well, yeah, except for this what so what is the If you're running the coils in the fridge, right, that that will automatically remove enough humidity to keep your humidity low enough, right? Then if you have a humidifier to add back in, then you can achieve any humidity you want without the salt. Right, right. I mean, a salt can maybe act as a buffer there, but it's not necessary. The if you weren't running cooling coils that were going to automatically dehumidifier the the if you didn't have some way of removing humidity and adding humidity, then whether or not salt would be helpful would depend on what the ambient relative humidity of your area is. Right? I forgot where you said you were calling from, but it's San Francisco. Oh, yeah. So I mean, you're pretty mean, like you're just air is pretty nice there, right?

Yeah. I mean, it's it's pretty pleasant. It's a little damp, just because of the fog. Although, you know, it's been nice recently.

I guess it depends on what block you're on. Right? Everything's a microclimate in San Francisco.

Yeah, I moved from the body side of the city to the warm side of the city. And it makes a huge difference of about five to seven degrees, depending on the day.

That's so crazy to a New Yorker. You know what I mean? That whole concept is so crazy to New Yorker anyway. So, so yeah, I would say that, you know, if in the in the, in the fridge, you have the like it? Will it dehumidify the fridge as it's working? Or is it some is it totally sealed? Like, is it old style? So you can see the coils? Or is it new style, so you can't see the column.

So I haven't taken it fully apart yet. It's about half taken apart. And I'm like in the process of building this. And one of the reasons why I was asking was because, you know, if I have to put a Pyrex pan full salt at the bottom, that's going to change the way I configure it. But it doesn't really have it's pretty, it's pretty sealed in there. There isn't really, you know, there, there's, there's like, there's the there's the freezer component of the refrigerator, that's got like two coils, I was gonna try to take that out.

Right? Well, except Remember, though, these units usually have like the single compressor, and they're running everything off of the one. So if you take the, you're not going to use the you're not going to use the chilling of the fridge at all.

No, no, I'm gonna use the chilling of the fridge, I was gonna try to pick the it's kind of like one of those like mini freezer components.

Yeah, and they're usually that mini freezer component is actually what provides the chilling for the entire fridge. And, yeah, and it's, I mean, if it's the one I'm thinking about. And then what happens is they they concentrate and insulate the freezer area so that it stays frozen. And then the rest of it kind of doesn't. And that's why stuff that's up near that freezer box sometimes freezes over like things like lettuce and ice. Because remember, they're making these things by the bazillion and they need them to be as cheap as possible. So they only have one refrigeration system in them not to. And they're always, you know, it's basically just like a balancing act to get the temperature right throughout the box. So you know, the the, you can shield off like the coil there a little bit so that it's not really chilling too much if you don't want to chill too much, but it's condensation onto those coils, and then the melt off and you got to drain the water out from those coils that's going to dehumidify that chamber for you. Because anytime you're freezing, anytime you freeze water out of the air onto a coil, and then you know, put it through a sauce thaw cycle. And that's how a dehumidifier works. I mean, that's literally what they are. And so you know, having that in some like in contact with the air in the box is going to definitely provide the dehumidification, that that is therefore that you can add the humidity back. Otherwise mean otherwise if you if you can't use that to hit the numbers that you want, then the salt might be something that's useful for you.

Okay, great. Well, that's

that's really helpful. And then I had another question you had an episode I think it was like maybe six you were talking about coffee cocktail called the shake NATO. And you said you were cold you are cold brewing the coffee directly into the liquor and I was wondering if that was just grain spirits or what are like, you know, as close to that as you can get. Yeah, and I was wondering what what liquor you were doing the cold brew in the extraction in the ISI?

It really depends on kind of on my mood. What I use most often is a dark rum, the one that I And of those, the one I use most often is called Ron Zacapa, which it's called 23. It's not 23 years old, they use like a Solera system. So like, you know, one micro liter in a bottle is probably 23 years old. But it's, it's a good nice, good nice dark rum. And I like it because it goes, it goes well with the cover. But I you know, that said, I've done it into totally neutral as well depends on what you're shooting for, like we're shooting for, like a cocktail. And the coffee flavor is extremely intense. So you know, two ounces. But I also wanted a little bit of that kind of rum sweetness on the nose. But if you don't want that you can use you know, you could use a neutral, a neutral spirit, but we were using regular 40 proof 40 Proof liquor, in fact, the, the, the recipe for the ISI, the one I always use is the one that's in, in the liquid intelligence and in the book. And if you don't know, if you're not, I'm pretty sure you could do a look inside on Amazon and snag the recipe. For the I think it's called cafes. The COPPA is what I call it in the book. And it's just but you could substitute any kind of liquor you want. The key there is that it coffee infuses so quickly into the alcohol, that you just have to be pretty accurate with your grind, you know, and pretty accurate with your timing. Otherwise, it can just go intensely bitter, intensely bitter, you know, and the whole idea of doing it that way. So you don't need to add like a ton of sugar back to it to make it to make it. Good. You know what I mean?

Right? Yeah, there's a race in San Francisco called beta breakers. It's like the most San Francisco, San Francisco holidays, everybody wakes up at 7am and does pre drinks for the race, and then gets in costume and runs this race completely drunk. And it's a complete mess. But I do a pre breakfast. So I was thinking about drinking, like making this as the cocktail hour last year, we did a Kentucky breakfast. Is it going to be something that you said being precise with? Is that going to be something that is too different? You think is going to be too difficult to do? Allen Manute for a bunch of people, you know, at seven in the morning kind of thing? Or is that? Is it going to be? Would that be a good application of that? Yeah,

I would make the coffee liquor the night before? Let it sit. Okay. And then, you know, and it's no, I've just started we did that cigar event? How much of that stuff? Do we bust out? A lot, lot. Right. So it's no problem you can bust out like a lot lot of it is it'll hold overnight, no problem. And then just shake it, shake it in the morning. You know, and then you could do the either the milk the version with milk or the version without milk depending on, you know, kind of what you feel like but already like, you know, man running when you're drunk. That's painful. Why do people do that to themselves? Oh, no, it's

so much fun. So like what we do is so like last year, I made strawberry buckwheat pancakes with bourbon, whipped cream and had Kentucky breakfast is and you're only going like two miles and you don't like actually run you more like walk and drink more. It's like a it's like a two mile. It's like a bar crawl. Except there's no bars and you just bring all of your alcohol and everybody's drinking in public. And it's the one day of the year where the nudity ban is like is not in effect. So, you know, there's costumes and naked people and people throwing up and it's it's almost San Francisco of San Francisco events.

Like Santa con. It's just like, this is like our version of Santa con without frightening the children or maybe with Friday.

We will we do Santa con. So like, you know, we were on that bandwagon too. This is like our own special thing. But you know, you it's it's just this massive they shut down the streets and they like have like, you know, it's just massive. I know you hate block parties and being outside. But it's it's really you know, if you ever wanted you know, people do all sorts of weird stuff. And it's just kind of insane. Collective insanity. A quarter of a million people show up every year to do this.

So quite a lot. Anyways, yeah. So listen, try that. Try that recipe out and Tweet us a cooking issues. Let us know how it worked out and let us know how you're carrying chamber worked out.

Yeah, well, thank you for letting me BullGuard the show.

All right, I got another call.

Actually a few more. So let's take the next one.

I cool caller you're on the air.

I just wanted to give you a little bit of encouragement and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. You have to continue the intro with your show in the full New York WWE introductory fashion because that was the first time I heard your show. In fact, I think I I just happen to fall On your podcast, and I the first episode was one that Natasha Stole Christmas trees. The intro I'm sitting in my bed listening to the intro, I'm thinking, What in the SAM, hell is this? And then of course, it turns into a great show with rants and raves. So don't let anybody change your introduction, because when I started listening to the backlogs, as soon as I told him a backlog, it was like, hello, this is Dave and this is like your NPR and it was like, Is this the same show? This is not right. There's so much more aggressive ideology here that I want to hear. So don't let anybody change that. Anyway, my question was, how do you clean your cast iron? Do you use soap? Is the is the question. Yeah, I

use so you know, I use regular kind of, you know, the dishwashing stuff, like, like you have on the on the counter and not the not the powdery stuff, obviously, but just like regular kind of hand dishwashing soap. I mean, I don't let it soak there forever, but I use, I just use scotch brite and, and that soap, and then wash it, give it a rinse. And then I always, almost always throw them back on the burner for like 15 seconds on high heat just to heat it up, get all the water off the pan so that it's dry. So it's not like sitting and do it and I've never had a problem, you know, my, you know, ever. I mean, it's I think it's the old, the old cleaners like alkali based cleaners, or alkaline cleaners can hose it because it can start breaking down the surface, but that polymerize will surface isn't, isn't you know, donning cutting that grease, you know what I'm saying? And, you know, I think aggressive scrubbing can probably be might be able to cause you a problem. But like the regular like, you know, I don't use steel wool on it, but I use scotch brights and you know, chore boys and stuff like that on them. And because otherwise they get all gunked up, you know, and mine stave like pretty, pretty slick. And I've used it on, I have old Polish pans, like an old I have an old gridwall that's polished and you know, that I've had for probably, you know, 25 years and it was probably 40 years old when I bought it. And I've never had a problem with that. And and I have a bunch of lodge stuff that you know is newer, the kind of pebbled surface it's not polished. And it's also fine that way, of course that you know that those newer pants take a lot longer to build up to a complete like awesome non stickiness than the old school ones, but my seasoning never comes out. In fact, they're the ones that pants I use most often. So I scrub them all the time because I have I have like six of those like fajita pans and they just sit there they stack so easy. And so they I keep them right on a ledge above my my burners and spin around. But they're easy to get to. So I use them a lot but

the word on that grid, but yeah, you know if you're gonna be an excitable New Yorker and frustrated ly excited when somebody tells you that they don't like biscuits. There's no way you can go back to the NPR intro. Because eventually you're gonna get all excited. So just stay with the excitement.

Fair enough. What do you think Jack? Sounds good. I

had another call waiting. Yes. Yeah. All right. Well, thank

you. Thank you for the call. We think stars. Stars are shaking their heads. Even though this is radio, not TV. She is merely shaking her head up and down, which is classic stuff. But thank you for calling in. And next time. We'll go back to talking issues. Caller you're on the air.

Hey, how's it doing Dave? Natasha, Jack and the rest of the crew

as well. Yeah, doing well. We're enjoying the nice weather. But the Stasi hates nice weather. Do you know why Anastasia hates nice weather? Weather. It's just nice weather. It's not raining. It's gloomy. But are you like living the Stasi hates nice weather because she doesn't like it when people

you know, I used my Twitter and I was feeling great. No sunny out and I said something on Twitter. I was like I'm a change man and the sun and then somebody tweeted at me they were like don't tell stars.

Yeah, cuz she hates when people enjoy the outside. Especially hipsters. Anyway, sir. Go ahead. Sorry.

I'm also vote for your enthusiastic opening. But

that's, that's a side note.

My question is, if you're aware of any other modernist technique that you can make black garlic outside of long and slow method.

Did you write in the black garlic question?

Okay, how would you go about making Oh yeah, there's a quicker way of doing it.

The world is so crazy. This happens so often. Like we have a question someone sent us on black garlic. Which is totally separate so and you know, it's unfortunate we have to get I don't know if you can get Johnny Hunter on the on the phone jack. But he has. I was literally talking to Black Guard that he was on the show a couple of weeks ago and I was talking to him about black garlic because they make it and then he said, Yes, someone makes it in like, in like a couple of days. And I think they just do it by jacking the temperature higher, but I couldn't remember what the protocol was that the guy use. So for those of you that don't know, who are listening to the program, so black garlic is something and like, from all accounts that I can read, it was fairly recent in invention. But the basic principle is, you keep whole garlic cloves, whole garlic heads, rather, you know, skins on and everything sealed in a container so that it doesn't they don't dry out, and you let them go for at like 60 degrees Celsius like 140 or there abouts. You know, like within plus or minus 5565 10 degrees, and you keep it for like a month or a little longer. And people mistakenly call this fermentation stars but it's not really fermentation because it's not, it's not a it's not a bacterial or fungal thing and the crap, it's just you know, it's it's this stuff breaking down over time at this elevated temperature. And what you get is this kind of like awesome, sweet black garlic. That is, is awesome, but it's expensive. So a lot of people make it themselves. But and you know, the only way I've ever done it is in my Excalibur food dehydrator, but people do it in their rice cooker, for instance. And in the rice cooker. rice cookers are a bit hotter. They're at 165 degrees Fahrenheit. And I've heard people say that two weeks in a rice cooker might be enough, you know, on the Keep warm function. But I forget what Johnny said. I don't know if we can get them or not. But if not, I can tweet him and have him tell me what what the other guys were using in Madison. They're upset today, by the way, losing Madison badgers. Yeah, yikes. And a badger. Turns out, it wasn't badgers. It's mushroom mushroom. Anyway, was that actually done by someone in university Madison. Anyway, I digress. The point is, is that yes, there is a way to speed it up. I don't know the protocols, but it doesn't taste quite the same. It's still taste good. But it's not the same. Because anytime you're working with these reactions that take place over a long period of time that are very complex, whether they be my art or any other kind of reaction like this, the flavor you get depends on every factor involved, including the rate at which it happens. And so speeding it up, you might get something that looks the same, but it probably and according to Johnny doesn't taste the same doesn't taste bad. And it's not necessarily a question of better or worse. It's just it's going to be different. So that makes sense. Fair enough. Yeah. But if I can get him on the phone, I'll figure out what it is. It's better because he said that these guys were getting like in a couple of days, like like I think it was under under a week, which would be awesome. It's not like a 10 minute thing. But and you know what? I was wondering like, what else? Like what else do people experimented with? I know that Nordic food guys lab, the Nordic food lab folks did onions and shallots the same way. And they said that those were good. You know, the thing is, is that alliums are so complicated that you know a lot of interesting stuff goes on but I have like a rice cooker that will stay keep warm for like, you know, weeks and weeks, I should just just keep random stuff in there and see what happens to it. I kept I've only kept rice warm for three days, I was hoping I would get some sort of miracle rice after like three days of keep warm, but it didn't. But maybe I should have left it for like two weeks. Like maybe I'll just like divide up my rice cooker. Like Have some rice there. Some onions, some garlic and some other random stuff and just keep it on keep it warm for like a month and see in like kind of note the changes that happen to a bunch of different foodstuffs. You know what I mean?

Yeah, totally. Yeah,

I'll give it a shot. Anyway, I'll let I'll I'll either tweet it on cooking issues. Or if Johnny gets back before the end of the show. I'll have him figured, you know, tell us the fast way to do it. All right.

Excellent. Sounds good. Thanks.

Let me know. Thanks for calling. One more call. Okay. Caller you're on the air.

Hey, sounds good, dude. All right. That's the I like the loud intro a

lot more. Nice. So we know that our core our core folks, the folks that are willing to call in they liked the loud. That's who matters. Yeah. Gotta play to the core baby.

I got two totally unrelated questions for you. So I'll start with the first one. I run a pop up bar, and I do a lot of home infusions and things like that. And I've tried filtering with coffee filters, which are terrible and Brookner funnels, which are a pain to use, and water filters, which I'm worried stripped flavors out do activated charcoal. They do but read all of liquid intelligence and read all of cooking issues blog and understanding the classification technique, but I don't have a centrifuge. So I'm wondering if I got clarification, works on infusions, or just blended things like your strawberry gin for the first question,

right? So I have Aguilar clarified liquor. But yeah, I'm not super jazzed about it to be honest because it strips it just strips a lot of flavor and and then you end up having to add some water because you got to hydrate the Aguilar and water. And because you obviously the temperatures, you can't reach the hydration temperature of Aguilar and straight boost. And so I've done it, but I just don't like it. You know what I mean? It's like, ag are clarifying juicers. Yeah, but like doing the Agra clarified booze, I've never been super. I've never been super happy with it. I tried it once because I did an event in in South America once and couldn't get a centrifuge. And I was trying to do I forget what it was it was something like it was something like strawberry and gin, but but as a whole, you know what I mean? And it just, I just wasn't happy with it. I'm not saying that you couldn't find something you're happy with. And it will work. Right? Yeah. But it's just the flavor is not going to going to be that. That good. Now, you could, you could, you could maybe treat it as something that's pre watered a little bit, right. But still, I think you're gonna strip a lot of flavor out. So like, if you were going to do like a carbonated drink where it didn't matter that it was going to come out more watery, then sure, you could take an infusion hydrate the Aguilar in the water, then like temporary back in trying to keep the alcohol percentage somewhere around 20, maybe 20 30%. That was at 20. And then and then ag our clarify your yield might not be that high, your proof will probably go up a little bit over your base level because the water is going to be preferentially held on to the cigar a bit. And it'll clarify, and it might taste good for something carbonated where you need like a lighter flavor anyway. But I don't think it's going to work that well for let's say a stir drink.

Do you think that the charcoal and a water filter would strip less flavor than I got? Or am I just plugged on for a sensor chips?

Well the charcoal does clearly strip flavor. I mean, yeah, you can taste it, it strips flavor. But even if you take something that's clear, for instance, so you know, you're not removing particulate matter, then and you taste it, you can taste a difference after it's gone through a charcoal filter, like a Beretta. In fact, we used to run we used to run all of our Smirnoff through Brittas to get rid of the you know, any residual hospital nose on it before we were using it to do rotary evaporation back at back to school. And, but I was too cheap to buy the actual brittle holder. So we used to take a torch and melt the bottom of core containers and then punch the filters through the bottom a quart containers. That's how cheap we are. So it was someone was like you guys had such great facilities and literally like we're sitting there like melting the bottom of a quart container with a torch and punching a Beretta through because we're too cheap to buy the picture for it. But whatever. So I mean, look, centrifuges are great. And yeah, I think with within a year, I will say, within a year, there will probably be centrifuge, there will probably be a centrifuge that normal people can afford to have around within about a year, I would say. I mean, I'm not going to guarantee it. But I would say that that. I mean, I would bet on it. If there's not I'm in big trouble. Let me put it that way. So you know, if you can hold out a bit longer, you know, maybe maybe you should hold out a bit longer for that for the centrifuge.

Cool. All right. And I have another question about something entirely different one of your favorite subjects country ham. Ah, love it. So I was wondering if I want to serve it like a European dry cured ham? Is it better to get one of the ones that have been aged for a year or more or one of the ones that have been gone for like four to six months? Okay,

no, no, no, here's the problem. The four to six month ones are some of them are like they're not that they're low quality right. But the way that they the people who are good at it anyway doing faster hams they, they basically they put it through faster cycles have kind of like it would go through naturally and then they they keep it at exactly the humidity they need to to get the the thing as dry as possible as fast as possible. Right. So on First Inspection, these hams can look like a like a 12 month old ham right now someone that's doing it, so Okay, let's just back up a second. So if you were to take someone, let's say Like a nuisance or an Edwards or, you know, frenchville, or any one of these kinds of, like style Benton's caliber of hands, like completely traditional style hands, right? Yeah. And you were to open one of those guys up at 776 or seven months, right? So this hand would be okay then for like traditional American cooking, but the inside of the kind of like, cushioned area of the meat, the meaty part is going to be really tacky. You know what I mean? Yeah, and it's going to be impossible to slice without gumming. Forget the fact that the flavor won't be fully developed yet. But in terms of slice ability, it's going to be pretty tacky in there. So one of the hands, it's been meant to be released after, you know, a fairly short amount of time might seem like it's lost all that tack in there. However, I've noticed on slicing them, when you slice them, and then let them sit, they can get kind of gummy, tacky, they're not going to have the same texture. And also, there's no, there's no way that you're going to get the same kind of flavor in a quick in a quick thing as you will in a slow one, because you'll have the drying, but you won't have the flavor development from protein breakdown. And whatever else happens, you know, lip oxidation, wherever the heck else happens in the ham as its aging, that stuff just takes time. And they're not accelerating the aging, they're just really accelerating the dehydration of it, you know what I'm saying? And so, you know, what, you know, what a country ham, you know, really wants is to go through, you know, you know, a full, you know, a full cycle of at least a year, sometimes, you know, better two summers like that, you know, the, the middle of that second summer, man, when they're like 18 months, that's like, sweet, that's the sweet spot. You know what I mean?

Question If I have one that's that old and that naturally dried out? Does it need to be refrigerated once it's been cut?

No. I mean, some people do, it depends on how you how you store I used to, like I say, I used to store mine out in my, you know, hanging, the problem is, is that you can get certain insects can attack it. And, and you can get mites that hit the you know, that create a powdery residue around. That's why some of the old timers they used to spread lard on the on the cut surfaces. Yeah, but you know, the other thing is that sometimes, you know, when you bone it, there's like the, you create a cavity there and like molds can grow in there. You know, of course, you can always trim away more mold that mold on the outside. As long as you trim it away, you know, isn't going to kill you, you know, he's got to, you know, save, you know, trip, trim it away. The thing about storing it in the fridge is that you can store it in the fridge for even a relatively long period of time. But like I tend to some like get like weird kind of like sticky nastiness on where the paper let's say you were to wrap it in wax paper and put it in the fridge. I get like some sort of weirdness on the surface of the meat right by the wax paper. And sometimes you can pick up odors from your fridge, and vice versa. Like for instance in the country ham fridge at some, you know sambar like they put the for some reason they put the milk for the coffee in the country ham fridge, and that milk is like unusable. I don't know how those suckers are using it for coffee. They must love ham coffee, you know what I mean? So

I don't have that much space in my fridge anyway,

so yeah, so I wouldn't sweat it. I mean, like the you know, just you know, I wouldn't have it necessarily resting against anything. Can you can get some like weird mole weird context. I'm gonna keep the bugs away from it. Yeah, you know, and if you if you happen to get mites again, none of that stuff is going to kill you. You know what I mean? Trim away anything you don't like and you're good to go. I mean, this stuff is you know, this stuff. Survival Food, man.

Yeah, of course. And on final question. I know that Edwards uses heritage breed pigs like Berkshire and whatnot. Are there any other producers using those kinds of pigs?

I think I think nuisance might have bought some stuff from Patrick and there's a there's I just went out of my head. But there's a there's a company that produces some really expensive and very delicious hams that are all kind of mashed fed. I saw them at star chef so you can look up the people who are but the name of the company just went right out of my head as I went to go think about it. But I think it's more and more going to happen because we that's really where that's really where the future of American kind of country ham excellence lies is in, in the feed and the meat itself like the like I've always said the curing is there. It's just the you know, they hadn't forgotten how to do that. Right. You know what I mean? It's just the quality of the meat that needed to be kind of brought up but I think we're getting there. Can

I chime in here? Yeah, I'm Sam Edwards and I listened to heritage Radio Network. Nice. I just really wanted an excuse to do that. Nice.

All right night. Sam Edwards actually one of the original sponsors of the radio. Yeah. The radio network, huge supporter. He has sponsored the show from time to time, but But you know, anyway, good, man. All right, that answer your question. Hello. All right. Nice. Yeah,

that's great. Thanks a lot. Cool. Thank

you. Okay, so we're about to get kicked off but let me just go through what we're not gonna get take a break. Jack's gonna fake and sort of break right Jack?

Actually, you know, I have another minute for another caller. I just the lines are off the hook today.

All right. Caller you're on the air.

Hey, pays me Yeah. Oh, hey, Dave on the intro. Nope. Go with whatever makes you happy.

See, there's the first person that cared about like what we want to stop doesn't care. This is just me. Stuff that size sizes making her head at her migraine head. All right. I'll go with what's happy. Nice. Yeah. Yep. But I

do have a quick question for you. I made your tea time for Easter. Brunch was a great hit. Everybody loved it. Awesome drink. But there was so much good phoniness left in the bottom of the shaker. Is there a trick to getting that out?

Oh, that's a good question. Well, so you got to know your likes, I don't know your shake technique. Right. So when you shake usually, you shake and then kind of like, let it drain. And then I'll do I'll do a snap. Like, you know, I'll like come holding the shaker kind of pointed down with my, with my pointer holding the holding the strainer onto the thing, right? And then I'll give us I'll give it a snap down. And that'll get some last little little bit little bit out. And because I was reshard trade it out. I mean, sorry, I couldn't

hear you what you said was or using a Hawthorne distrain.

Yeah. So So here's the thing with a strainer, right? So the bad hawthorns, when I say bad, I mean, the cheap, like the normal kind of hawthorns that you use, you have to be really be careful. Otherwise, you get like, too many of different larger and weird size ice crystals coming out. I like like a couple of ice crystals in a drink. Because like, I like that little crunch. The problem is, is that it's hard to control with those kind of older Hawthorne strangers. That's why most of the for, you know a lot of the cocktail people for a long time who were anti crystal, because there's a huge anti crystal on top of the drink movement for years in the cocktail world. And that's why those folks, you'd always see them straining through a tea strainer, right? So they would have a Hawthorne, which why would you use Hawthorne if you're gonna go through a tea strainer? Right? Don't ask me because I don't know. Except for the fact that they rest more conveniently, they're easier to hold than a Julep strainer, I think in in a tin. And then they would strain through a tea strainer. Now the problem with a tea strainer, it's fine for a daiquiri. But for a milk wash product, which Tea Time is milk washers and milk wash. And for those of you that you know, I don't know, go go look it up in the, in the liquid intelligence or it's been on the show before I think milk washing, there's a specific foam from the whey proteins in milk washing, and that is destroyed by tea strainer. So, so I never use a tea strainer on that. And so that's why I use exclusively the cocktail kingdom's like fine. The fine wired Hawthorn because it's like the best balance it doesn't let through an inordinate amount of crystals. You don't have to worry about you know, clamping the gate of your Hawthorn down so hard to the shaker that, you know, you're you're you're having like white knuckles by the end of the evening. And you know, and it doesn't hurt the foam. So that's what I use for it.