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.

With 20 years in the culinary production game ourselves. We're hoping we can give through these conversations an insider's view into personal stories from the field, as well as an in depth behind the scenes look into some of the most popular food programming. In today's evolving culinary media landscape.

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,

we've met some of the best people in the world both in front of and behind the camera. And we're bringing them all together to share their stories, their delicious adventure and their unique journey into this crazy world.

So to be the first to hear our episodes when they launched this fall, go to wherever podcasts are streaming and hit subscribe and make sure to give us a follow at the Culinary call sheet on Instagram.

Today's program has been brought to you by s Wallace Edwards and Sons third generation cure masters producing the country's best dry, cured and aged hams bacon and sausage. For more information visit Surrey farms.com. You're listening to heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you'd like this program, visit heritage radio network.org for 1000s more.

Hello, and welcome to cooking it uses Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live from Roberta's pizzeria on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from around 12 to around one o'clock. Natasha the hammer Lopez a little bit late to the studio today a victim I think of the New York City subway system but call your questions to send 184972128 that's 71849721 to eight. And don't worry mustache should be here shortly. Have some questions already. So let me just take care of some of those. The other John Stuart writes in Dave's mustache at all regarding Steve Jenkins from fairway and who is the sound like those you might remember that last week the program was brought to you by fairy who's the program brought to who's doing it today. It's a that's Wallace Edwards and son. Oh, yeah, as well as Edwards, who's one of my favorite American country hands now. You know, Sam Edwards, who is I don't know, like billions generation ham hearing guy. He you know, he and I had this one disagreement and every time I mentioned him on the air, and every time I see him in person, I say this he markets, his uh, one of his excellent, you know, at least one year old age kind of, you know, not semi Ambien cured hams meaning that they're refrigerated during the curing the actual curing process so that they don't spoil but then are allowed to age ambiently you know, for upwards of a month, which I think are you know, delicious. In the makes them actually with heritage foods. What's the word? I'm looking for heritage breed pork, and they're delicious, but he markets those as Suriano serie being the County in Virginia where they are, you know, kind of classic. You know, one of the classic places for American country has, by the way, all American country hams almost all American country hams are fundamentally derived from the culture of Tidewater, Virginia because it started there and then remember, like everything or everything from there over like through Kentucky was Virginia back in the day and most of These, you know, a lot of these families have carrying roots that date back to at or prior to the American Revolution. So I mean, it's, there's a long history of it there. I don't know where they're gonna start with anyway. So he's calling it Suriano as like Serrano and and Suri because, you know, well over a decade ago, gosh, it's got to be well over a decade ago, you know, you know, he decided that the kind of hams that he was producing in America, were not receiving they're just do and thought they were most like, some of the ham mountain hams. Serrano just means mountain ham, you know, in, in Spain, and so kind of, you know, was kind of joining the idea of this American ham with kind of this quality of mountain ham that he had had in Spain. And, you know, my feeling has always been American Hammonds, American ham sellers, American ham, and sandwich. You know, as much as I love and respect his products, and you know, he's a good guy. Just call it American. What do you think? Anyone anyone know? No one cares? Only me. But anyways, that wasn't what we were talking about. We were talking about what were we talking about? We were talking about, oh, Steve Jenkins last week from fairway, who is our sponsor last week. And we'd had a little discussion about like, what voiceover actor he sounded like. And so the other Jon Stewart writes in regarding Steve Jenkins from fairway, and who does he sound like to me, he sounds like Alec Baldwin, who does lots of voiceover work, which is weird, because you mentioned Alec Baldwin only minutes later. And it didn't make an I didn't make the connection. So perhaps you disagree. I through audio of the two into this link pretty similar, but perhaps not who Dave was thinking of. And then there's a link which maybe we can play later with playing, you know, Steve Jenkins side by side with Alec Baldwin or maybe we could just call that up somehow. And you know what, John, you're dead on man. Those that's exactly what it is. It's Alec Baldwin, but it's kind of one of those things. Voiceovers freaked me out a little bit like you know, I was watching this stuff and you know, commercials come on, because I have a TV now and the kids watch it. I watch it, man. Come on, please. But the commercials come on, guys and Magnum P eyes Tom Selleck. doing voiceover work. It means nothing. You know, Morgan Freeman. By the way, I don't know if any of you guys watched the Olympics Morgan Freeman literally like I think he was like sitting around on call waiting for people to win medals because he would congratulate them on the metal that they won like 10 seconds after, or did he record every permutation of every American winning every metal he's like, congratulations on your bronze, you know, anyway, whatever voiceovers amazing. So, John, you're totally right. Alec Baldwin is the call Alec Baldwin, of course, whose voice is amazing. But John also has a question. I've been bagging all of my low temp food using your ziplock method for years. The FoodSaver Vacuum never looked like it had much advantage over the ziplock technique and doesn't really seem to pull a hard vacuum. Therefore, it never seemed useful for bagging where you want to use a vacuum to pull your marinade into a product, for example, but I just ran across the Thrifty vac, which you can see on the YouTube. It's a 50 vac. I think one word and vac is VHC. Thrifty is spelled thrifty as in someone who is thrifty. And it's cheap. It's on the amazon.com. And you can look it's like 22 bucks, fundamentally, well, I'll finish the question and it looks like this might be able to pull a harder vacuum, then he's saying I guess presumably then a FoodSaver. Do you think this looks useful as a poor person's vacuum chamber? Or is it not likely to pull a hard enough vacuum to be any better than the ziplock method? Thanks for the other John Stuart. Yeah. Okay, so I took a look at this device. And for those of you out there, who you know, haven't seen it, or you know, aren't on the internet's right now though, how you listen to us if you're on the internet's the, what it is, is is it's a one way valve and a little kind of like a like a boxy piece of plastic and a one way valve that you put on to a large bag, you know, ziplock or other and it punctures the bag and then it comes with a little, little, you know, like sucking device almost like a larger version of evacuee van pulling thing and you stick a ziploc inside of the other bag, that's almost seals so that's the same as the as the the technique the the water technique, by the way, which is what I use at home because I don't have a vacuum machine at home is I see almost entirely seal a vacuum Ziploc bag, Ziploc by the way when you buy a Ziploc bag. First of all, like Glad bags work, I'll admit but like I always buy a brand name bags because off brands suck. Never get the ones that have two layers of plastic get the single layer get also the freezer ones because they're much better gas barriers and the regular ones and never get the ones with the slidy doodles. I do not trust the sealing capability of the sliding doodles get the ones that have the old school, just zipper you know, they're just not a zipper, but like just you know, the the seal without the slide, doodle, right. So you seal it almost all the way up. And then you just leave the very corner unsealed you put your finger in it lifted by that corner it now forms a diamond and you immerse it under the water as you immerse underwater slowly, you kind of you know, force the air out from around it and in presumably your product is surrounded by some form of liquid on the inside of the bag, oil sauce, whatever. And, and the air wants excluded, never comes back in because the water, the pressure of the water excludes it and then add right as the tip of the bag goes underneath. you seal it with your with your you pinch it sealed, and it's done. And this is the way I do almost everything. It makes a fantastic seal. It doesn't create a vacuum, but it does exclude air, which is 99% of what we want to do when we're doing low temperature cooking unless you're doing a vacuum effect. Okay, so what this thing does is it allows you to put a ziploc inside of another bag with a one way valve, but in other in other ways it's similar you leave a little corner of the ziplock on unpressed you pull the vacuum you push the seal shut while it's inside of another bag, and then you pull it out and it's sealed. i It's not really that kind of a vacuum pump that they're using that piston vacuum pump is never going to pull a decent vacuum. Anyway so we have a caller I'm gonna get to call her and then come back and talk more about the this vacuum machine and kind of what I think it's good for and what it doesn't do. Hey, caller you're on the air.

Hello, this is Martin from Vienna calling.

Oh hey, how you doing?

I'm fine. Thank you. How are you?

Doing? Well, I love you and I've only been to your town for a couple of days but it seemed very nice when I was there.

Yeah, it is. Have you been to a Bristol stands? Did you Did the famous cheese sausage?

No, no, the only so I was there literally I was there for ECE that company I was doing work with them with rapid infusion. And I was only there for I was only there for like literally a day and a half not even two full days. The only thing I got to do we went to we had a we had a you know schnitzel that that what's the name of the place that's a couple blocks from the it's a couple blocks from the Opera House. It's like famous for each schnitzel, what the heck's the name of it like oak fair something?

There is the figure Miller where you get the huge ones in I don't think it was the other one is the plus foot

after remember, but it was good, you know, with the lemon wedge and everything, enjoyed the Viennese potato salad. But I did get to visit the market that long outdoor market that you guys have what's that called this? Smart? Yeah, National Park. That was really cool. And like there's a lot of people there selling because I only wanted Austrian products because why would I buy a different product when I'm in Austria, right? So I went through there searching various different kinds of cured meats and cheeses and different products and thought it was. It was really nice. But no, I did not get to have the cheese sausage next time when I did get to have no idea. Now we had a sausage. No I did because when I showed up at lunch, for the first day I showed up and like had to go right to work from the airplane. And they're like, What do you want for lunch? I was like worst and so they brought a bunch of when I think one of them was cheese was good, but I can't recall the name because they just put it in front of me. They didn't tell me what I was eating. But there was one with cheese in it. What's the name? What's the name of it?

He's like, could I not? Oh, yeah, yes.

Yeah, hospitality kinda. Yeah. What is Kreiner mean? Well,

it means that it means the sausage coming from crime, which is in Slovenia called Kranjska Gora. So that's where the original sausage is coming from. And then the Austrian added the cheese to it. And maybe the case a kind of soy cheese kind of cheese sauce.

Well, my my memory serves me that was it was a good call adding the Add indicator. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so what's

your question? Yeah. But I have I have a question about hydrocolloid is about gelatine actually, because I'm trying to do kind of vocab pannacotta, right. And I have problems to get it like, stiff freely. So I know of course, that adding alcohol to gelatin decreases the stability of the shell you have in the end, but I just when I when I when I get it lower, and the gelatin sets really nicely. You cannot taste the vodka anymore. So and my one My question is about how high can I get that? Still, if you have like a ratio that I can still have a set gelatin with, with water,

or most most sources that you read, usually for and it's not really based in any sort of reality right? They put they put the upper it's based on kind of rules of thumb. They basically upper limit for most alcohol sensitive hydrocarbons and most of them are because remember, it's not water right and hydrocarbons require water to do their work. They usually place the upper limit from normal functions somewhere in the range of 20%. Somewhere in that range. So in general when you're using

that would be like the pure pure alcohol range or the vodka like 20%.

pure, pure. But that's, that's like the upper limit. But like the more alcohol that you add to any system, right, the more depends on the hydrocolloid to the more hydrocolloid that you're going to have to add to get the same result. So like, give me your give me a recipe, how much? How much vodka was in there? As a percentage of that?

There was about like, I took two, two parts cream and one pie part. Vodka. So 1/3, it was water, which would be like one six, plus almost something like 20% alcohol, I guess, in the end, so that should be fine. Should be

fine. But remember, the cream isn't all water either. Right? So you got you got cream, which is not all water, although it's not. It's the it shouldn't affect it the same way. But what and in what percentage more than the normal gelatin did you use?

I first like I use the kind of sheets that I would normally use, like, I don't know, the 60s on half a liter.

So I mean, I would just I mean, if you haven't tried up like and it was too it was too soft, right? Or did not set it all. Yeah, it was it,

it was to stop. Because my idea is that in the end, I put a liquid CEO of coffee. And so basically, it's a reconstruction of a of a way to Russian. And whenever I tried to get the liquid shell and it eventually it would break because it's just not real enough. So that are not not not stiff enough. Right.

A couple of things you can do, you can up the gelatin concentration, right? I mean, that's the first obvious thing to up the gelatin concentration by like, I wouldn't, you know, don't do anything drastic, like double it because you don't have that much alcohol in it. So I would up it, I would up it like I would up at like maybe 25% or something like this and see whether or not that adds enough. Were you close to getting it? Was it close to the right texture or not?

I mean, it's not that it is it is it is like a set shell but it's just it's not easy to handle in like when I tried to put in the the liquid shell itself. So I just it would eventually I have like a failure of almost 50% of pieces when I cut in cubes that will fall apart. So and that just it's just not stiff enough maybe maybe just to raise the television would would help.

Gelatin is good that way in that erasing it doesn't sound like a lot of other hydrocarbons when you raise their percentages you get a lot of nasty kind of textural effects and you get a lot of nasty kind of taste effects when you up them to the point where you get there like the functionality right whereas gelatin is pretty friendly that way I mean, if it they mean once you start getting very high percentages on any hydrocolloid, you get a lot of flavor masking because you know a lot of the water which is delivering the some of the water, the water base section of the flavor component is locked up in in hydrocolloid made matrix. And so you tend to get very poor flavor release. And the reason why gelatin is so good. And why it's using these is not just because its texture is awesome, but because it tends to mount melt at mouth temperature. And, you know, and thereby you know, release, it's almost get like a hunt, you know, 100% flavor release. The only other ones that have kind of such excellent flavor release are ones that are used in kind of very, very low quantities like gelatin, right? But if you were going to switch to a different gelling medium for this like Joanne the problem you're gonna run into, is you have to you have to ensure that you're going to have to you're gonna have to heat it to a high temperature and then get your alcohol in before it gets down at set temperature right because it just sounds like a snap set but the other problem is is that really high temperatures that you need to hydrate things like jelly and you can't get alcohol that high now you can get around it I've made alcohol fluid gels all the time with both Aguilar and with and you know nagger might be another thing too because you can make ag or you can make Aguilar a lot softer if you put locust bean gum in and or some some a modifier like that. And you can you can get you know or Kappa Kappa carrageenan LBG is the classic one that people use to do gelatin analogues and you might be able to harden that one up more and have you know, it you know, you'll definitely know faster because it's Since a lot faster than gelatin does, and I've done plenty of Aguilar gels at 20% Alcohol plenty, because I used to do you know, as for demos I used to do, I used to do, like fluid like alcoholic fluid gels, you know, all the time that we're, you know, right around 20%. So I know that I know that that system works well. But I think the gelatin will probably work well for you if you just upped the percentage slightly. And while slightly 2020 tried 20% and see whether or not you get because what you really want is you want it to be just at the failure point, right? You want it to hold itself, you wanna be able to handle it, move it around and played it, but you don't really want any more than that right and then that's what gelatin so good at its is its seeming delicacy when it's you know, you know there but yeah, but then you you run into the other issues if it's breaking and then if your kitchen is hot or whatnot, I don't know how well a control you have over the temperature in the kitchen. But you know, when gelatin gets close to being too soft, and then it gets warm, it's like you know, you're done, you're done. You know, it's an you're never going to be able to handle the product but I think you should be able to do it but by increasing those levels, if you were saying that you're going to do straight vodka saying well that's you know, problematic, but you know, I've done plenty of you know, up to 15% alcohol with gelatin just by upping the gelatin even ones that have to withstand fairly, you know, rigorous you know, conditions like I've done carbonated alcohol gel regular gelatin gels up at those percentages. At least 14 Because I've done you know pretty high high alcohol wines that way, but but by jacking the gelatin somewhat

by the way when I when I would like put the cream, the witchetty memes and floods and everything like still warm into ISI and then spray like to make whipped cream with the token hold the shape or would it?

Yeah, that was so mean gelatin. By the way. Also, like with cream if you get well like anything over about 20% That creams going to start being in danger of breaking like that's kind of like the magic place of cream. Cream liquors without any sort of added protecting things that you could protect the cream, obviously, you know, with various agents to stop it from breaking but including gelatin. That's what the comique thing is made out of. But anyway, jelly. Yeah, gelatin can be used as the foaming agent and isI with that however, like if you want it to hold if you want to do like if you want to make this recipe and an ISI and have it hold indefinitely really dance Creek like dense, dense, dense texture. What percentage cream? Is it to the to the fluid gel to the gel? Is it

the full? What percentage cream is 37? To the What do you mean? Or?

Yeah, no, it's like it's like three parts? Three parts. Two parts vodka Mix one part cream?

You Yep, yeah, no two parts cream and one part.

Oh, yeah. Okay, no problem. So what I would do is I would lower I would lower the, this should be fine, like you're down, you're down more like you know, 15% or something like this, you should be okay, just by opening it up and try this right? Take your take the vodka do make a I think it should work at around. One, one 1% Take, I'll just give you some random numbers to try take 500 mils of water and do 500 mils of water and then 1010 grams of don't You don't have to make the full recipe I'm just giving you numbers that are easy to remember 500 grams of water 1010 grams of ag are cold obviously hydrate the the Ag bar, you know whiskey and cold. Bring it up to heat simmer for two minutes. Temperature and 500 mils of vodka, right? Let it set into a 1% jail it should be fairly firm even at that even at that 20% If it's not, you can try it at a slightly higher Agbar percentage right now blend it in a blender. So now you have a vodka fluid gel. Now that's only 50% Vodka, right? But instead of doing to cream dough one, lean, make it a little leaner and do one to one cream with that vodka stuff in an ISI. And as long as the fluid gel worked, which I'd have to test it to make sure that exactly 20 That Viagra works. That is going to be dense, dense, dense. So a lot of times when I'm trying to do very dense isI foams, I do fluid gel reinforced cream bases, and they work they work really, really well. And in fact, you can do things that would normally curdle cream, like you can do lemon juice, and eventually it'll curl but because a lot of the lemon juice is locked up inside of a fluid gel, it doesn't break the cream right away and the stuff that found out last like a long, long, long time. But the one thing I will say is that when you're putting a fluid gel into an ISI, you remember it's a fluid gel so when you when you point the ice tied down, it doesn't naturally run down to the bottom of the ISI and dispense you have every time you dispense it, you have to put your finger over the over the dispensing tip and flick the canister down so that you're sure that you have all the fluid gel packed against the head so that when you dispense it, it's actually there but it's a fantastic way to do reinforced creams and I do reinforce creams with like very high acid fruits all the time that way and I'm pretty sure it would work with an alcohol fluid gel as well.

Okay, thank you very much

no problem. And by the

way, I won I want isI siphon by mentioning you really because they had they had like this this thing before Christmas, they will give out like free isI siphons just you have to write them why you want to use it and I mentioned because I like being Dave Arnold's quick infusion drink and I would like to use it and that's how I want my eyesight.

Beautiful. I just had another idea by the way you might be able to hydrate the Ag are in in like milk or cream and then put the vodka into it and dope it in that way you wouldn't have to have all that water but you'd have to play around with it to make sure it would work but I think that might also be a solution that will stop you from having to add the extra water but give it a shot try it

okay yep, thank you very much All

right. Have fun with a whimper Thank you, I will hide that. Okay, now back to Star stars. Oh yeah, we will come back with cooking issues and mustache.

Today's program has been brought to you by s Wallace Edwards and sons, Edward Suriano hands are aged to perfection for no less than 400 days and hickory smoked to achieve a deep mahogany color. The Edwards name is well known for its world class aged and cured meats. Their exclusive hearing and aging recipe produces a unique flavor profile that enhances the quality characteristics of Berkshire pork. Optimum amounts of pure white fat marbling contribute to a flavor that's a delicate, perfect balance between sweet and salty. For more information visit www dot Surry farms.com.

Wow, we jack Jack's here. anastasius. Here it's like it's like crazy. The show can start now. Oh man, you guys, you guys. You missed. I went on a thing about the whole Siriano thing and how I feel about it. But now I can talk about the fact that I'm guessing and I've never had this conversation. So I'm just guessing instruction. Do you hate the harmonica? No, I don't really. I would think you hate it because you hate things that tell stories. And it's like an inherently storytelling kind of an instrument it like you know, kind of speaks from the soul. You're like, yeah, now I hate it. Yeah. So how are you doing? So that's good. Yeah. And Jack doing well. Yeah. So Jack, you had a question you were gonna ask us, right? Yeah,

we wanted we wanted to know your kind of thoughts on some of these new apps coming out that are catered towards restaurant eaters. Like, for instance, there's one called No wait, right. And you you can you can get on a restaurant waiting line at home with the app.

I like well, I mean, I'd love I love that. Yeah. Except for you know, my, the problem. I don't know how it works. I've never used it as a as a user. I would like that. Imagine if you could just not. So I live like two blocks from or three blocks from Mission Chinese. Right? Which is Danny Barnes restaurant. And, you know, they don't take the the reservations. And the way it's like, a billion years, but, you know, it would be no problem for me to just sit at home, you know, you know, the wife and I drinking ourselves silly and then waiting for you know them to say you've got 10 minutes to hightail it over here. And I can hightail it over there. And you said it'd be a fantastic boon to someone like like me, I don't know how they operate it as a you know, as an operator. You know, I know at the bar that a lot of times when people are on a list They don't necessarily come back, you know. And so it's do they have some mechanism to ensure that you're going to come back?

We're interviewing them later today? So we'll find out that mean.

So I mean, it's the kind of thing that obviously is a boon to the to the consumer. The question is, how hard is it going to hose? How hard is it going to hose the restaurants that use it? Or do they have some anti hosing mechanism in the application? And goal apps need

an anti hosing mechanism? Oh, yeah, definitely. I

mean, so I mean, just to let you know, you know, we have a lot of situations at the bar where, you know, we people come in, we're like, okay, we're full, because we, you know, we only have seats for like, 32, or whatever. And we say, okay, you know, party of, you know, five, or whatever it is, you know, we'll we'll text you when it's free. Then we text them, we put a reserve sign on the seat, now we have five seats empty. And it's not, it's not just that there's five seats empty, that we're not turning money around on, although that does hurt me deeply. The real problem is, is then people come in and they see the empty seats, and they get pissed off that they can't get seated. You know what I mean? So it's, it's tricky. It's a kind of a fine dance on how to do it bigger places. It's easier to deal with because they have more turnover, but I wonder how it works in smaller places. Like we only have like 30 seats. You know, it's like it's it's hard to ride that line properly. You know what I mean? Yeah. But I'm interested to hear what they say. I'm interested here with the anti hosing mechanism is and yeah, we gotta go in today's does anything good? No, absolutely not. No, no, absolutely not. Nope. Nothing. You know, it came in yesterday. When we got the Sears all t shirts in yesterday. Yes. Okay. They looked at other stores couldn't didn't get chance to see if she had to go run an errand before they showed up. The extra large is extra large.

I'm glad because I'm nervous. We have most of our T shirt buyers are extra larges. You could

you could sell a tugboat into the shirt that I picked up good. Do we have XXL? Are they just XL just excels, man, Dax you know that so Booker and DAX named after my kids Booker and DAX DAX. A small one who only wears Lutra mess although he forgot it this morning on the wall walking the dog I think because I kicked him out of bed because my wife was gone. So they both kids had to come out with me to walk the dog this morning. And for God is Luke's door mask for the first time. It's the first time I've seen him outside of the house without a Lutra door mask on in months, like months. Weird. I wonder whether maybe he's giving up the luteal phase? I hope not because I haven't you know, he hasn't had his mascot his custom mask? How did we get into this? What are we talking about? Sure. Oh, shirts. So he was like, I don't want to see as all shirt I was like, Dax. I guarantee you we didn't order any kids sizes. Alright,

there's only a small. I mean, the price would have been a lot higher if we had kids sizes. So just thinking about the company.

What I See Stars always tries to make it seem like I'm being an ogre for no reason. First of all people, people people. I was never once consulted on this. And I would have said, you know, yeah, no, we're not gonna order kid sizes, because it's fundamentally not something we want kids to play with. Small is not like DAX is like he's nine. He's not like not like a teenager. Booker could wear small No, Dax wants to wear it around. Dax wants to wear it like industry. Are you now you're saying that the ones we bought are going to shrink?

No. Like there's a way to shrink shirts on purpose, right?

And or No, I don't do that kind of thing. I don't try to buy normal shirts and then shrink them down to club wear because I don't go to clubs. Okay, no, no offense, no problem clubs. So back to Jon Stewart's the other Jon Stewart's question. So for those of you that don't remember, because it seemed like it was a long time ago. The the, the issue is, is will this new thing that's thrifty vac work to pull real vacuum on something as opposed to just using a Ziplock My feeling is it's not going to suck any more hardcore of a vacuum than a vacuum van thing can suck. And that it's not it's probably useful if you want to without having a big water bucket around to put things in a ziplock but I don't think it's going to achieve much more than you can do just water dunking in a ziplock. So there you have it, but it's cheap. And so if you want to do a lot of dry bagging work of stuffing Ziploc bags, you know, maybe it'd be useful, but most of the people, I looked on Amazon, it's got a lot of very positive reviews. But if you actually burrow into the reviews on Amazon, almost everyone who was familiar with the water dunk method of zip locking was like I don't really understand the advantages over a watered down method on zip blocking. So I don't think it's going to it's not going to be there. It's not going to be you know an alternative for kind of vacuum infusion I don't think and by the way, they you know a couple of the one of the people who did a review of it on YouTube that you sent us a link to said that you know that it's kind of turns it into a chamber vacuum machine and it does not turn into a chamber vacuum machine because the minute you displace the air out of the bag, air from the outside pushes on On top of the bag, in fact, that's kind of the MO it's using the bag to push on the bag. And that's how it's working chamber vacuum machine works entirely differently in that, it just removes the air and there's no physical compression on the item until the air is allowed back in. Right. And so that's kind of like that is the that that is how chamber works. This works much more in the fashion that a FoodSaver works, except for instead of using a FoodSaver bag, they enclose this thing in an outside bag. Now what I do think it'd be really good at probably is if you wanted to make castings, like if you want to do knock castings out, I don't know what my brain has shot today, if you want to do like fiberglass work and you wanted to or prepreg work with, like fibers and stuff, you could you know, because one of the problems of doing let's say you wanted to make something out of fiberglass and resin, right, and you want to put it over a mold. Well, the question is, how do you get it to stick nicely to the mold. And you know, a good way to do it is using kind of a VAC bag system where you put the entire you put the impregnated resin impregnated fiberglass, carbon fiber Kevlar, whatever the hell you're using over your mold, you put it into a vacuum machine Suck it, suck it. I think this might be a good way to do that if you're but but that doesn't come up very often in the kitchen does it mean I used to remember remember that remember the moment got a guy thing I did back in the day with it. I used vacuum bag molding for that. But that was where you know we took different colors of fish layered them up with transglutaminase and then power froze them on a mold in like a wavy shape and then sliced it on. On the Hobart model was the 3000 or 2000 meat slicer so it looked like wood grain fish that was a fun trick. And then that while you know why? Because they gave me that freakin meat slicer and I let stupidly let left it at the FCI because it felt it had been there so long that they kind of like stupid I should have taken that said. Yeah, right. Yeah. Okay, like that would work. Anyway. So, to me, so I'm gonna talk about us. We had some we're gonna talk about I forget anyway, Joshua writes in from Switzerland regarding ice cream. Hi, Dave. Anastasia greetings from Switzerland. I'm a big fan of your show. And Stars is a big fan of Switzerland. As it turns out, right. She loves it a Swiss she loves it the Swiss. But he doesn't say which Switzerland he's from.

You can only like the Italian part. So

really? Like how for how like cleanly divided are the different parts of Switzerland. They all hang out in like the big cities. They all hang out. Right. So you get everyone in the big cities right at

times. Don't really? They don't move from America. Yeah. Now the German French to

move everywhere. They move everywhere. So there's no Italian people in Geneva? that not a lot.

Not that I saw. None.

Not one, not one. Italians.

Italians. They don't leave their mother's house.

Wow. Wow. All right. We'll talk about that later. Greens are switched on. I'm a big fan of your show. Lately, I've been obsessed with ice cream. I own an ice cream maker which is able to cool to negative 35 Celsius. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit. I didn't do the calculation. But just for you for your edification. That one I always remember minus 20 Celsius is minus four Fahrenheit. So you're well into the minus range. Well, well under the minus range probably around minus 20 Fahrenheit something pretty hardcore. A couple of days ago, I made a whiskey ice cream on a recipe by Heston Blumenthal, which by the way, I looked up the Blumenthal recipe, so that what's about to happen isn't like whatever is about to happen. The results that Joshua that he's not going to be happy with he's gonna describe him in aren't due to a high alcohol content and whiskey ice cream because what I saw on the internet's of Heston Blumenthal, he burns the whiskey first to get rid of a lot of the alcohol so we're not dealing with the softness based on high alcohol content. Let's just get that I don't want anyone thinking that one reason this question because that's not what's going on. Right. Were you thinking that stuff? No, no, right. I love the ice cream maker. Okay, so on recipe with Heston Blumenthal and sage ice cream with egg sugar and milk custard. I love the ice cream maker pre cooled to approximately negative 25 Celsius and then pour the ice cream bass and let it churn. And here's the thing. Here's what you stick in your head I let it churn for approximately 30 minutes. After that, I store the ice cream overnight in the freezer. A taste test the next morning left me unsatisfied, though, the ice cream was tasty, but it seemed that too large ice crystals had formed because it had an unpleasant mouthfeel and didn't feel smooth. Therefore my questions How does the turning time influenced the development of ice crystals era? Is there a minimum time which you would suggest? Do you see any flaws in my ice cream making? And can you recommend any good literature on ice cream making and theoretical base? I've read the chapter on ice cream in the book the kitchen as laboratory but need more. Thank you in advance for your help. Josh was by the way the word laboratory brings up I have So Travis Huggett, who did the photography on my cocktail book, and I were in the subway the other day you And when I say their day, I mean yesterday. And we had, like, seriously the idea that could make us like, like the new like an Getty slash, what's his name? Wegman. That Waimarama thing. But since we're never going to do it, I'm going to give this idea out there to somebody. Now, you're going to think this is really stupid. But the more you think about it, right? The more you think about it, the better it gets ready. This could be the hottest wall and desk calendar of 2015. Labs, in labs, talking Labrador Retrievers, in laboratory situations, with lab coats on labs, in labs now you're like, that's dumb, right? Look at this. I think it's dumb, even though I came up with the idea. And yet, if I saw that thing on Amazon for 15 bucks, I would own it right now. I would buy it. I would preorder that sucker right to hell now, labs in labs. Come on somebody do it. Here's what I want Travis and I we need some cut. That's all like all I want, like maybe even a mention a cut. You know, when they come with the barrels of money and drop them off at your house for having done this labs and lab calendar we like when you're swimming through money. Just remember that as you're bailing the boat out so that you don't drown in your own money. Just put one of those buckets of money, you know, our way. That's all I'm saying. Right? That's all that's all. It's all I need. Labs and labs. So here's the deal. Ice cream, the longer the ice crystals. The faster you free something, the smaller the ice crystals are. Right. And the reason is, is because with rapid freezing, you get many nucleation sites right, so ice crystals don't ice crystals, lot prefer to form on other ice crystals. In other words, ice crystals prefer to grow rather than than to form entirely new ice crystals, right? It's more energetically favored. So the slower something freezes, the larger the ice crystals are, the more rapidly something freezes, the more different nucleation sites you get. And the smaller the ice crystals are because they don't have time to grow into larger ice crystals. So there's a direct relationship between the size of the ice crystals that are formed in in a freezing process and the rate of freezing. Now, there are other factors as well, you know, the composition of it, but but for given ice cream composition, the crystal size is directly related to the freeze time. Now here's another thing. Typically, when you're freezing the ice cream, remember, you're never freezing ice cream until it's a total solid, a good amount of the product of the ice cream is still in a liquid state right? And, and how much of it is liquid is dependent on what the freezing point of the ice cream is. And that's dependent on things like the sugar content. The fat kind of things like this won't really affect it, but the sugar content, right? So you know you're you're looking at, there's a lot of liquid water in there. So when you draw out of a machine been churning for 30 minutes you draw out of the machine, there's still a lot of liquid in it, you already have kind of large seed crystals in there, because of the long freezing time 30 minutes, you then put it in the freezer to harden overnight. And what happens, those crystals get bigger and bigger overnight as it gets colder and colder. So let's say you have a draw temperature. So forget what the freezing temperature of the of the of forget what the minimum possible condenser temperature is in your ice cream maker, right? Forget it, because that's not what's important. What's important is what the temperature how fast it can put the energy into the ice cream, right? So a commercial ice cream machine, even if it's only, you know, if it's running at a higher temperature than yours has enough, has enough ability to chill and have chilling power that it can freeze the ice cream to its draw a temperature of somewhere around I don't know 20 Fahrenheit, let's say 18 Was it between 15 and 20? I forget exactly Fahrenheit the drive temperature, it can do that in 10 minutes or less. Right. So the lb 100 Which a lot of people use the tailors. Depending on the batch size that you put in, you can get down to like a seven minute batch time, right? Anything below like a seven to 10 minute freeze time. The the the fact that your crystals are smaller doesn't make a damn bit of difference because you can't taste ice crystals that like your tongue can't distinguish the texture of ice crystals that are any smaller than that. So while some people say the texture of liquid nitrogen ice cream is superior to the texture of ice cream that's frozen in a regular machine, because it theoretically has smaller crystals. That's horse hockey because your tongue can't distinguish anything but you can very easily tell the difference between an ice cream that took 30 minutes to freeze and an ice cream that only took seven or eight minutes to freeze. Now the flip side is is if you were to take so what to do you know one thing is is looking at the power requirements on the on the back of your machine and you can kind of get an idea of how much and you can't really because things get much less efficient as they get colder in terms of how much a they can effectively apply to the ice cream when you're when you're making it. But almost all machines are underpowered to actually freeze the stuff in a relatively quick fashion. One thing you can do, obviously start with extremely cold mix. Second thing you can do is use less mix. Now the problem with using less mix is that a lot of machines if you underfill the machine, it has too much overrun ie too much arrogance whipped into it. So this is something you're going to have to address or, or worry about. The third thing is, is if you are going to have a freeze time of let's say 20 to 30 minutes, then I would recommend only doing it right before you're about to serve it and not try to harden it since since machines that have like a 20 to 30 minute freeze time, the texture of the ice cream is usually pretty good right out of the machine but Once hardened, then it all starts going to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly. I don't know if that seemed to answer that that part of that question. As regards references, the best online reference and it really gets you a long way before you buy any books is go to Google this dairy education series at the university and I can never know how it's actually pronounced his town. Guelph union scale for Guelph, Guelph, Quebec and Canadian who knows. But the professor who wrote that is H Douglas golf, and it's a fantastic resource and I use it as my quick and ready resource and have for years and fantastic website with a lot of information now, as for books, the classic the classic ice cream book is called, you know, make sense. Ice cream. That's what it's called. And it came out in the 60s it was released by a company called Avi press. Avi press in the 60s and 70s put out kind of the best food technology book series. It was so awesome. I used to go to the New York Public Library and read them constantly. And zero I would literally Xerox them. You know, this is like, you know, 20 years ago go Xerox them. So I could have them because I couldn't afford them. Now they've been superseded somewhat and AVI is no longer out of business. But they that that book was called Ice Cream by Arbuckle. And Arbuckle was it like the end like everyone was like Arbuckle ice cream, and they didn't even call it ice cream anymore. They just called it Arbuckle and everyone knew that they were talking about the ice cream book, no relation to Fatty Arbuckle, the silent film star who may or may not have been wrongly accused of doing that whatever. I don't wanna get into it, but the Arbuckle icecream so you familiar with Fatty Arbuckle and Sanatana? starstuff? Yeah, I think he did it poured on it. Really? Do you think he did it?