Cooking Issues Transcript

Episode 172: Hot Lobster Rolls & Roasted Marshmallows


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Hi, this is Joe Campanelli the host of in the drink. 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 in Bushwick, Brooklyn and the back of Roberta's pizzeria every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 joined again with Jack Edelman. Jack, I'm great. You bet. Where were you? Where were you on the vacation where we

have vacation? I

was I was working, I was performing at Bonnaroo

performing but like the heritage radio or for for your band for my

DJ performance Collective, we are called Full service. So there were 16 of us.

Are you in fact, a full service DJ collective? Yeah. Let me ask you a question. Now. You know, just based on what your what you play here, you don't like you know, spin like wedding hits, right. That's not your gig. Yeah. Okay. But let me ask you a question, though. Yeah. Let me ask you a question. This thing that people do now, nowadays at parties where they play, like 30 seconds of a song that I really love, and then they throw it into some other song that I may or may not like, but then it's only ever, like 30 seconds at a time of a song. But what's cool, what's with that? What is that?

Well, I mean, I guess that's, you know, if you're looking for a professional DJ, right, or if someone's making a career as a DJ, you have to do something that sets yourself apart from somebody that might just have Spotify, because anybody with Spotify could just play a song that everybody knows.

Yeah, but to keep up not to keep a room grooming, how many of these people when you're switching this stuff up? Keep people's asses pumping the entire time? They don't they always flip flop. It's always messed. It depends on where you are. And do I really want to hear 30 seconds of hypnotize? Or do I want Biggie Smalls to like, you know, bash me all the way through on that thing? It's fair point. Yeah, I mean, I still you know, I just, I just don't get I just give you like, like, like old school. DJs. Right. They weave stuff in and out, but they're really just kind of like you lay down a long, long, long, long track that you can just keep grooving to, fundamentally all night right. And then you can layer tunes in and out of that. But it's not like they're literally playing the tune for 30 seconds and then just doing the crossfade right, which is what I feel people are doing now.

Are a lot of remixes and stuff.

Week. All right. So I don't know. Do you think it's not weak? Tell me why it's not weak. Why it's not weak. Why would I just describe like 30 seconds of hypnotizing and crossfade under some other side doesn't even necessarily have the way

you're describing that doesn't sound so good.

You think that these DJs when they're doing this would notice everyone's leaving the dance floor?

Well, that's your answer. If people are leaving the dance floor, then you're failing.

Yeah. I don't think any of you are getting married out there. Enough with the brown eyed girl. Seriously? Jack, can you dance to brown eyed girl at a wedding

ago? I don't really dance at weddings.

There you go. TJ, what about us? What about you says I haven't been to a wedding in a while. Yeah, but when you go out dancing, what do you like when they play like those like those songs that are good songs. But they're like you want songs everyone's been gyrate to write. And that's pretty much it. Good gyrating beat buff buff buff buff buff enough water on the sidelines. So people don't die.

You can like finger snap to brown eyed girl, I guess. Yeah, but everyone

look unless you are freaking Fred Astaire. You're not going to stand around in front of your friends, family and God forbid someone that you're trying to get in bed with? And snap your fingers? Probably not. Yeah. All right. Listen, we have more time later on this jack. Do you have Chris on the phone? No, we

can get on the phone.

I'll read out. I'll talk about the question a bit. And then while you're getting on the phone, we'll try to do this here. So I got a question actually was into the into the Twitter by truck Schneider. Asking about a recipe that was published on ChefSteps for MiKri. You know, partially cooked meekly like that word Omega says. You don't like it? Why? What does it sound like to you? Anyway? Well, I can't Chris isn't on the phone yet. I know you're gonna talk about it. Well, I mean, he has to hear the question. So I'm not going to anyway. So it's about meekly. Sandwiches, like partially cooked? And the question. I've got Chris on the line. Hey, Chris, how you doing? I'm doing well. How are you Dave? Alright, so got a question about one of your chef step recipes. And I'm presuming it's yours. Because when someone asked a question, you commented, so I assuming that means it's probably your recipe. It's for the meal. Yeah. Yeah. The MiKri salmon. And the question was from Chuck Schneider, it was, dear folks, I love the flavor, texture of this meaning your recipe, but curious how it compares to both raw or traditional cooked product safety wise. Now, just for you know, you want to like give me give me like the 32nd like rundown the difference between this low temperature salmon. And the one that was the ones that are popularized by like the Roca style cooking that was, you know, came into vogue mountain around 2001 2002 is that this one is cooked, well cooked in quotes. I'm making air quotes around the microphone, and then refrigerated afterwards and actually kept which is non not the way that you know, the early low temp and Suvi jockeys were doing so with that in mind, why don't you give us the, like 32nd rundown on the recipe? Sure. Well, the

important thing to recognize that it's not only cooked or par cooked, but it's also lightly cured with salt. And so you have two factors improving the safety, you've got a bit of salt that in combination with the heating is more effective at providing a margin of safety than eat alone. And for various reasons, we actually tested this recipe with an independent Food Research Laboratory where it was challenged, tested for a two week period. And we actually showed that although the heating temperature alone wouldn't ensure adequate margins of safety, the combination of the salt and the heat together, show that the recipe was actually quite safe against the usual pathogens. And so we feel pretty confident in recommending it.

There's only 40 degrees C though, right? I can run down. Sorry, the cooking temperature was only 40 degrees C, right? That's right. 104. Yeah. So apparently, in fact, for many bacteria, that's so people, let's just get this straight, straight up straight off the top. Chris, by now for those of you that don't know, I don't know how the hell you would be listening to this if you don't know who Chris Young is. But Chris Young is one of the founders of ChefSteps. And if you hadn't gone to that website, yet, I recommend you go right away. Or I would wait 35 minutes and then go the other. You know, also, you know, one of the authors of Modernist Cuisine, the greatest cookbook achievement of all times and and so there's a bunch of things when you're when you're doing food safety, Chris will will chime in in a second. And there's a lot of interesting interesting words about how the health department's across the country and nationally handle food safety in Modernist Cuisine if you haven't had a chance to read those sections yet. I especially like the submarine thing like that it's not really food safety, but that submarine thing changed my life. They I will talk about it later. Because Chris is limited on time. Someone remind me to talk about the submarine thing if I haven't already is that everyone's favorite section monitors cuisine or not Chris? With with the buckeye.

It's probably not

maybe yours. Oh, no, it's definitely one of mine. I mean, like, I mean, that's like crazy. I have to get into it. I'm sorry. So the thing is, is you know how how how much are like germs let's just call them on people really spread about you know, and this doctor of naval doctor on board a submarine, gave a exams to the sailors, and then said that he was testing their their, their nether regions, their behinds for something and instead put a phosphorescent powder dye in their butts. And then, like a day later walked around the submarine with a UV lamp. And the entire freaking sub lit up from the phosphorescent stuff is pretty much accurate. And I was like,

I The funny thing is, I don't think it's mentioned who that story came from. But the person the sailor in question, who told us that story was the renowned Craig Venter, the decoder of the human genome during his time in the Navy, so he's actually the source of that.

So presumably reputable. I think so. Nice. I like that. That's strong, strong. So you heard it here first, folks. Okay. Back to Back to what we're saying here. So here's some true statements, the the any food safety organization in the world, their job isn't to figure out the minimum possible thing that's safe from a bacteria or whatever standpoint, for a particular recipe, their job is to provide bullet proof, you know, guidelines such that no one can mess things up, and no one's going to get food poisoning such, all the rules are always overkill 100% of the time, 100% of the time. Now, the but here's, here's the thing, there's a little magical thing in the two magic words, because I was gonna get in an argument with Chris about like, you know, the levels, blah, blah, blah. He said, the two magic words which were challenged study. Now, if you want a challenge study is is you you, you actually usually incubate whatever you're going to cook with the pathogen of choice, and then you do your procedure to it, and then they test it with a certain number of iterations to prove it, that the bacteria of interest doesn't grow. And if your procedure does that, then it's safe. My accurate and no.

Yep. And so that's, that's exactly the approach we took, we were working with a food retailer who was interested in this recipe and, and so they funded this. And that recipe was actually put put to the test and, and certainly heating alone as a control would fail. And, and if you're if your salmon was unsafe, you would increase the risk slightly, although in my opinion, what we found from that is, it's probably not any safer, even if you skip yourself in steps and eating and eating most sushi. But if you add the salt in combination with heating, and you start out with a reasonable, you know, obviously, you shouldn't have a horrible nasty product. But if you start out with reasonably fresh salmon, you know, so yet is it typically a reputable supermarket or, or fishmonger and the combination of the salt and the low heating, followed by the Chilean refrigeration was adequate to provide an appropriate margin of safety. How

would you avoid pre butchered filets? Well,

in general, we prefer you know, it's always the less processing your ingredients have had, generally speaking, the safer they're going to be because there's less opportunity for surface contamination. So it depends on how concerned you are. If you're very, very risk averse, then, you know, maybe, maybe you do want to basically have everything as pristine and handled as little as possible. But you know what, I eat salmon sushi in Seattle. And there was a study that said that one out of four pieces of salmon sushi have viable and affected worms. So, you know, we all do that pretty regularly, you know, most of the time, you know, we take some risk, and it doesn't hurt us. Right, right. But these are really minor risks.

So here's the here are the two bacteria I'm going to ask you about because I'm sure these are the ones that people one of the some of the concerns was botulism and listeria, right. So both of those were tested in the challenge.

No, we didn't do that because we were going to have adequate refrigeration, and you were not going to have so with botulism, you have to under undergo spore outgrowth. And our process does not allow nearly enough time to basically trigger spore spore germination and outgrowth so

well, but there's no module ism out. So So you're saying that the soak in the pack time prior to cook isn't enough to cause any germination?

No, no, I mean, the whole the whole process is salsa, salsa, salsa Falaise in a brine, you cook you vacuum seal them and cook them for an hour and then they're rapidly brought down to refrigeration temperature. So you're only in the danger zone about 45 minutes to an hour depending on the size of your piece of salmon, maybe an hour and 15 minutes including the cool downtime. That's just not a very long time for for bacterial growth. Now obviously if you load it up with with with viable botulinum bacteria rather than the spores, or if he loaded up with listeria bacteria. But those are fairly fairly rare and they shouldn't have grown to large numbers to begin with. So really, what you're going to be concerned with are is fecal contamination in the form of coliforms and salmonella, and you generally want to look at it salmonella, because it's killing the salmonella. It's a very, very good bet that you're killing the other other potential illness causing bacteria. I mean,

it seems to me that salmonella doesn't grow so well and seem to me that salmonella doesn't grow so well in the fridge. But like your your hope is that you're not going to get a listeria growth, your hope is that you get rid of enough listeria or that you inhibit its growth with the salt combo enough that it doesn't grow in the fridge, because that's the only one that

right. But the other reason is we're looking at refrigeration temperatures of two to three degrees Celsius. And so provided, you know, provided you respect that and it provided you only have a two week shelf life. Listeria as a minor concern, you can't say that this is going to be a product that's good for for a month or six weeks, because now even refrigerator temperatures, Listeria would start to become a concern. So you always you have to keep in mind, what timescale are you talking about to if you're going to basically cook it and chill it down and serve it within one to two days? This just isn't a very risky procedure. If on the other hand, you're a retailer and this might be in your supply chain for for a week, you really want to know you have you have a larger margin of safety during refrigerated storage.

Okay, so also people should label their bed everyone should label their bags, but I think people at home don't do it very much label your bags. And do you recommend ice showdown or no?

I mean, people at home do weird things with their their fridge for for starters, you know, just realize that, you know, any almost anybody's home fridge that I've ever seen would be condemned by a health department. Fair point, Dave.

Yeah, fair point.

And then the other side of it is I read a really weird thing. Like something like 25% of the population changes the temperature of their refrigerator, seasonally based on how warm or cold it is

outside. Why would they do that?

I have no idea. I like my brain melted a little bit when when when when I when I read that finding pearls from a large appliance manufacturer. And so, you know, this, this was a recipe that was you know, meant for chefs and meant for enthusiastic home cooks who are going to be knowledgeable about food safety and be reasonable. And so as long as you know, you use high quality ingredients, as long as you do salting and cooking for for a relatively short amount of time, and then as long as you chill it down and keep it in a cold refrigerator, as long as you consume it within a week. This is a very, very safe recipe.

Okay, so here's, here's, I'm gonna say because in case people don't look at the recipe right away, you're Brian percent was 10%. So stuffs not going to be growing in that Brian during the brining procedure and the branding procedure done cold, correct? Yes. Okay. Once you take it out, don't let it sit on the counter in the bag, do your cook step and refill it, you know, lickety split, so that you stay in the in the evil window as shortest time as possible, correct. Yep. and label the bag and keep it in the coldest part of your fridge or you know if you can maybe even on like an ice pack in the fridge. Good point or not the point. Exactly. And but challenge study done and proven safe or proven, proven does not decrease the safety level of the fish that you started with

appreciatively proven and proven that it was adequately safe at two weeks.

Now people bear in mind that safety levels are done for different things. So they're like, what we're talking about here is something that doesn't appreciably add to risks, as opposed to completely eliminating risks that are already so don't dip your salmon and poop and do this recipe. That's right. You need a different recipe if you're going to dip your salmon and poop beforehand

I don't want to see that recipe.

Hey, but like all kidding aside, I mean like a lot of the recipes out there a lot of the rules out there where they make you hammer everything are done with the with the fact of mine that you might be horribly contaminated with, you know, quite literally with poop.

Yeah, and you know, the funny thing is, we worry about the risk of say a famine, the Queen, or a rare a piece of chicken that's still slightly pink, but the infant is, we all eat salads with foraged ingredients. And, and, you know, we've all had Britain, our salad. I mean, that's not just dirt. There's other things mixed in there. So one of the, one of the things is you really have to, you know, look at a recipe and say, Well, what level of risk Am I really taking from that and where we think what we tend to think is risky as cooked, is often not the riskiest thing we

do. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have to Hi, Taylor. Can I bring up anything with you real quick?

Yeah, I've got a few minutes. So go ahead. Alright.

So I had another question in. This is from John riper in Seattle. He's actually got another question I'll take later that Chris doesn't need to stay on for but I saw so I don't know who's over there is doing if I know you've done a lot of work with cheese and he had a question about his cheese curds, he said the sources I've seen for cheese, cheese curds and cheese all use calcium chloride, when they want to fortify the calcium levels of milk for farmworkers presumed by the way people what happens is during the pasteurizing and storage process of milk that you buy in the store, you know, some of the calcium is rendered no longer available. You need the calcium there for the binding of the you know, it's a it's a, it's a dye Vaillant caddoan. You need it there to bind the curves together. If it's not there, you won't get a firm curd. And so people add sometimes calcium if they're going to use store bought milk to increase the firmness of their curds. And his question is, why aren't they using calcium lactate or calcium? gluconate? Is there a good reason? Or is it just price?

Almost certainly just pricing that you're adding very small concentrations so that you don't tend to notice the slight bitterness,

right? I mean, even I who hate calcium chloride, I mean, the recipes I saw, they're using, like a 100th of a percent, you know, something tiny, so no one's going to taste that. Now, you know, and,

you know, that's, that's such a minor level of bitterness that, you know, even super tasters, who are people are hypersensitive to bitter. I would be surprised if they're really picking up any substantial bitterness from that. And then the other. Yep. So that's, that's my opinion, I think it's mostly just the price and convenience factor. Calcium lactate on a commercial scale is just a lot more expensive than calcium. Chloride. And it's also less readily available.

Right? So point oh, 1%. That's actually that's got to be too low. That's a 10th of a gram and a leader. Right? Yeah, that's a gram and Alito,

because you do calcium already present. So the one of the things to recognize is you're really just fortifying

Yeah, I would say that that is almost an order of magnitude below the taste threshold.

I would suspect that's pretty near or below, I haven't actually seen any studies on what the threshold is

me I'm just saying I'm I'm bitterness. Imagine, imagine dissolving a single gram of calcium chloride into a liter of water, right, and you're doing 10 times less than that, I'm guessing that it's not going to be that apparent, you're doing 10 times less than that you're doing a gram into 10 liters of a first of all, not water of milk. And a lot of the way which is going to have a lot of that stuff is going to be expelled as well. So you're not going to mean the calcium is going to be bound up in the free calcium chloride, a lot of it will be expelled, I mean, non tasteful. And another reason to use it is that it you can use a lot less than use of the other ones. And it is extremely soluble. So you don't have any issues where you might have, I don't know, some piece of grit leftover that didn't get to solve because you didn't agitate it enough and you got strained out or some sort of nightmare situation like that. So I would just stick with the calcium chloride easier to you know, easier to purchase cheaper and definitely not going to taste it at that at that level. Right. Okay. Color, like clay hold on once. Can we have them both on? Yeah. All right color you're on here. Maybe,

hey, it's Colin down in DC. I don't do it. Alright, how's it going?

I don't know if you know, this column, whether you're listening with Chris Young is also on here with us.

So it sounds like the last guy was asking something about calcium, but I just had a was making some carmelized onions. And, you know, I've seen people you can give up as well and timeouts. All this folks are gonna be using a little baking soda to kind of help it along. Because of the basicity of it speeds up the browning. Right. But also, you know that I tried that and wasn't very impressed because it doesn't make it really mushy because it breaks down the pectin. But I guess if you use calcium hydroxide, would that give you the enhanced Browning but also keep the pectin firm? We're

not going to bring the calcium hydroxide is not so soluble. So you don't want to use it as your Yeah, like you don't want to use it for that application. No.

Yeah. Okay. It also, the problem is it's the what speeds of browning is alkaline conditions, but alkaline conditions, also speed the dissolving of the cell wall. So it really doesn't matter what salt you use to raise the PH whether use content or use baking soda or calcium hydroxide,

but calcium calcium in that. The interesting thing about calcium hydroxide and have done tests on this but not with Browning aqueous is the ICC

using the calcium ions to try to crosslink the the cell the pectin in the cell wall.

Yeah, that works. But they won't work for your application because calcium Hydra oxide, what you would need to do is a pre soak in a calcium bath, get the calcium into the vegetables, then lower the pH for the browning. You see I'm saying Gotcha.

Okay, so so so you basically do what, what, what particulars often do where they infuse some calcium salts to keep to keep the pickles crunchy or after after recording?

Sure, yeah. Right. So you can for instance you can do you can do the calcium. Yeah, you know, you can do the calcium hydroxide in a boil with a little bit to do to prevent to prevent the browning of broccoli, let's say and still keep the crunchy.

Yeah, I mean, we've used it to a lot of other beneficial applications, which just seemed like a place where, you know, it has the it had the hydroxide and you have the calcium all in one spot. Right. But if you just curious if it would kill two birds with one stone, it wasn't

even I would not do the Browning kind of stuff that you would get out of like the what was it you guys did in the monitors because he was at butternut squash that you added to the pressure cooker? Or was it?

The the the we did it with her? With butternut squash, we deal with bananas. We did it to just about anything we could we could catch

Yeah, but remember their pressure cooking, so they're going to make it soft? I don't know that even crosslinked packed in I mean, look, look, look at canned tomatoes, they keep their structure and they've been canned. So it is possible to use calcium to crosslink the pectin to keep it somewhat intact at report retort temps.

But that's a good point. Do

you have two parts two part process? Or let's go back to the thing we were just talking about Chris, the calcium a little bit of calcium chloride because I don't think it's going to take much. You know,

in you, again, I think in with the complex sort of mired flavors, I don't think bitterness, and you have other things, they're going to be slightly better too. So I think that'll just fit the flavor profile. So yeah, maybe maybe taking your onion slices. And if you have a chamber sealer, just do a do a vacuum infusion of some calcium, water, hard water.

And one last note. Similarly, so you know, calcium dye valen ions will be crosslink some different different types of stuff for us. And have you seen that? With guar? Gum much? Do you see much of a effect of calcium and other stuff? The viscosity?

I've never seen any? I've never seen any, any ion interactivity with war, have you Chris needs to not

know and, and I haven't worked with guar as much as I have locust bean gum, but no, it's not. I'm just trying to think this when I don't, I wouldn't expect.

I mean, look, look is being done. And

I was kind of curious, since you know, I do a lot of like energy research. And I was looking at No, just water water impacts of hydraulic fracturing. And of course, he use tons of guar gum there. And one of their problems in reusing the water is that you get an effective all these geological salts like calcium, fluoride and everything that's underground, causing stuck in their fluids to crosslink and get sicker and get on this stuff.

Well don't write don't they in fracking, fracking, Isn't it boring? I don't think you've boron.

Boron as well. But you know, it seems like like bonds or codium. Those are the things I'll add. But that's not present in a large amount in the geological formations. Whereas the calcium, there's tons of it. So that'll actually end up in the it can be like 10% salinity, just as calcium salts in some cases, right. I mean,

calcium levels that high?

Yeah. I mean, I don't know I look it up. It's interesting to me. I don't know that much about fracking. I know that guar is used because you can rapidly shift the viscosity of it. That's the good. That's the bread, right? I don't know how that happens. But I know that whenever you use guar gum, we use guar as a thickener, and we ignore calcium and I use guar and dairy and non to other you know, it's interesting. So like no one of my old recipes was a guar Joanne Loisel Joanne mix. And there's definitely a synergy between Loisel Jelena and guar that doesn't exist with Lucas Bingham. I don't know but I was only doing that in a milk based system and I never tried it in a non dairy system. So maybe there is some sort of wheat calcium reactivity that just I've never been aware of. I can look it up my it's not my memory. I'll go check the handbook of hydrocarbons the new savich classic unless there's some newer book I need to look at but I'll check it out.

Very well. Great. Thanks, sir. Thanks for filling a bunch of stuff.

All right, thank you. Thanks, Dave. Yeah, Chris, for having me on.

I do need to run now. All right,

cool. Thanks, Chris. And, you know, hopefully, this is good. There's a good part about knowing people is that when someone asks a question that relates them, we can just call them.

Yeah, always appreciate it. Good to talk to you. All right. Thanks,

Chris. And we'll take a break and come back with more cooking issues.

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and welcome back to Cooking issues. That was fun, right having Chris on the phone. Caller by the way,

stars. What do you think of that? What what Jeff, what do you think of the phone, the phone and phone two phones at the same time? It's

hard because they can't see each other? You know what I mean? I'm not answering that. Yeah, yeah, she's not answering that because she didn't even hear the question because Oh, no, people, people she didn't even have her headphones on. No, that's how important her text session was. That she didn't even have her headphones on.

Alright, let's had a quick like fun little summary question for you. All right. roasting marshmallows. Yes. What's your technique?

I use a sizzle.

Come on. No campfire technique.

Well, look, here's my feeling on marshmallows there. There are a couple of schools of thought I can think of three. There's the I don't give a crap school of thought, right? In which case they just do it. And then there's on the either end, there's the lightly toasted puffed golden brown marshmallow lovers. Right. And then there's the burnt crust, gooey inside like charcoal kind of lovers. Which one? Are you?

I don't know. I'd say probably the first. Yeah. But you know, it's nice to kind of give it a quick zap in there. And then you just kind of peel off that burn layer. And then you can kind of go again. And yeah, that's

true. It's true. stares at you. Are you? Are you one of those freaks? That doesn't like toasted marshmallows? I do. Okay, what do you which which kind of you like, well, you just did it on a campfire last week? And that's not what I'm asking. I said between the two things that you weren't listening to that I was talking about? Which one do you prefer? I don't know. Do you prefer it lightly toasted? Or do you prefer toast? Both I see people people do see, do you see what I'm doing? I want to say the wrong thing. It's wrong, it's a cheater choice. So the I think it's difficulty with the lightly toasted one is that a lot of times when you're doing it that way, you don't get like a gooey enough inside. Now some people might want the inside to be totally raw to have that kind of achieved to it. But I think that often when people do that they're going to under they're going to under do the insight to do that when really right, it takes more patience and most of us can muster because you have to hold it fairly high above the flame, you have to rotate it constantly and make sure that you don't have any one section to you know, to burn. And just who has that kind of patience, especially if you're using a forage stick, that's a pain to turn around.

I was cheating I kind of I put a stick in the ground over the weekend and just kind of kept it sort of close to the fire and kept it there for like 15 minutes. So it really slowly cooked and

how was it was great. She that's the thing. I think that's probably a good that's a good technique, it just who has that kind of, you know, that's, that's more patients and I can move I want a smaller toasted marshmallow, I want that sucker like now enter the Sears I'll enter the Sears although you still have to be careful the Sears all because although it does it quickly, and it's more even, you can still you know, very quickly set the outside of a marshmallow on fire. Because you know, the thing with the marshmallow is it's dry, there's not a lot of water there. So once it starts going brown it can then go black and then ignite fairly quickly. So you have to you know, you have to be you have to you know, be gentle with it. So it's like it's either either you risk the burn or you take your time. Those are the two choices. I like them charcoaled To be honest, although I like a toasted one every now and again. But I don't know I love that outside kind of charcoal overcooked action to know what I mean. Yeah, yeah. All right. So John rapers. Other question, which I'll get before I get to the other question, by the way it should you have any questions in the next couple of minutes? Call them to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2120 Yeah, Jack, your question. I think it's tough with two people on the phone because they can't see when the other one's going to talk. Yeah, exactly. You know I'm saying Yep, yeah. Okay. Jack's set that John's separate. A second question. What are your thoughts on equipment to create a cheese aging environment at home wine cooling unit seem to have good temperature control, but they don't control humidity or aim for a lower relative humidity than or they aim for a lower relative humidity than cheese's need? Is DIY the only way to go or is there a VI sa meaning spending money from your credit card? Alternative? John reference Seattle? Well, okay. You know what I've gotten a lot of questions on recently. Is this of cheese, I can't remember the name. It's called the steak locker. Have you been getting getting questions about this recently, if you can see, as Mark been asking about this, it's like a Kickstarter thing. It's available right now where it's, it's kind of like a wine cooler, but it's tweaked out for dry aging steaks. So it's got humidity and temperature control for drying steaks, and like I know light bulbs, you can see what's on, you can put a soft slab in there, if that's your jammy. Anyways, so that's got temperature and humidity control, however, it is going to be putting it at a lower relative humidity than you want so so that's probably not going to work for you, here's what you're gonna want to do, you're gonna want to go the only one I could that I know of offhand, and I never used it. So I don't, I don't really know how awesome it is. But the only kind of semi off the shelf. So it's not 100% DIY, but it's not 100%. You know, like plug and play Auburn instruments, who you know, is a leader in incredibly cheap temperature control stuff has the T H to 10, temperature and humidity controller for curing fridge and high relative humidity, right. So that's the key that it can do high relative humidity. And that's 190 119 bucks from Auburn instruments, and you just set your fridge on coldest, plug the fridge into the temperature plug on this thing, and then whatever you're going to use to control the humidity. So I mean, I wouldn't necessarily recommend like a pan with a small heater to increase the humidity in the in the fridge. But you are you could get a small humidifier that sits in the fridge, presuming that the fridge maintains a relative lower relative humidity than you need. And then you just plug those two things in, set it and you can walk away and it should work. So you buy a fridge or you know a working fridge, one of these units for 119 bucks and some form of humidifier that you like and and plug it in and go. Yeah, yeah. All right. Now we had a question in that we missed before Tom Fisher writes, where's he? Where's he live anyway? Do you know do you remember? Shoot? I don't remember where he lives. See if we can find it. Dear Dave and Natasha and Jack, I have a logistics problem. I fall in love with hot lobster rolls. Hot lobster rolls sounds like vaguely kind of vaguely kind of dirty, right? Hot lobster roll. Doesn't it sounds like some sort of like, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I like him. I like they're delicious. But something sounds like hot, hot and roll. It's hot and roll together, I think right? Anyway. And I'd like to make them at home. The problem is the lobster meat. It seems it seems way too expensive in both time and dollars to buy live lobster just esteem them to get the meat. Frozen lobster meat would work. But the affordable SOS sources only have it into pound packages. I need single serving sizes of four to eight ounces. And I don't want to resort to canned lobster. Any ideas? Okay, well. I mean, look, they're in a lobster roll, it probably doesn't make much difference. The only frozen lobster experience I've ever had was with whole foods. One day, I had to do a low temperature demonstration. And I went to Whole Foods to buy lobster not knowing that they somehow think that it's inhumane for you to kill a lobster at home. But it is humane to have some dude in a factory in Canada, kill the crap out of the lobster and then freeze it for you. Does that make any damn sense stuff? Makes no damn sense, right? Are Canadians inherently less cruel as people towards lobsters than Americans? Jack, do you have any thoughts on the relative cruelty of Canadian lobster killers and Americans? I think it's even even Steven right? Yeah. Yeah. And I would bet that in a commercial environment like the I don't know, but it's even rougher at home. You know, people are like, oh, sorry, buddy, you know, and they throw it into the pot. You know, I'm saying it is true that commercially, they use a high pressure when they're doing a steam, so probably maybe kills them a little bit faster. I don't know. But I've already done plenty of work on lobster killing so I'm not gonna talk about it. Now. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna get into it because I don't have time. But here's what I would say if you can buy a two pound block of lobster meat that you like, by the way. Also, if you train yourself in ripping a lobster apart, there's almost no time in breaking a lobster down. Like, I remember I was Bobby Flay opened this place called bar America. And I don't know if it's still up, but like a million years ago, right? I went to the opening party. And they had this giant lobster out there and it was crowded, so crowded. And you know, for anyone that's grown up on the cape or grew up around the cape or on the East Coast and like, even la lobster. I mean, we know how to break lobsters down fast. You know what I'm saying? Now it's true. If you want to get 100% yield out of a lobster, you gotta rip it open like break open the bodies get to get the meat out and small lobster that's not such a big thing anyway, and getting the meat out of the claws is a little bit of a little bit of hassle sometimes, but the guy goes I said, you know, they didn't have enough hors d'oeuvre is because they had more people than they thought. Right? So they had that, you know how like when they're opening a restaurant, they have like the raw bar out that no one's really eating off of, it's just there for display. No one talking about stuff. You've seen that a million times, right? So they had this like big old lobster, like a three pound or something, there are two and a half, three pound or some, you know, medium size for, you know, for people who get really big lobsters, but big for you know, being served on a plate. And I say to the guy, you know, one of the I was like, Hey, can I eat that he goes through if you can get the meat out, I was like, I'd literally as soon as he said, If you can get the meat out within within maybe 10 seconds, I had the tail me completely out of the lobster and I was eating and the guy had that, what the look on his face. Because anyone that's grown up eating lobster knows how to get the tail out of a lobster with no equipment and like almost instantly, you know, you know how to do the rest. I know how to break a lobster, you go to a Rhode Island enough. Anyways, my point being that you can get the majority of the lobster meat out in well under a minute. Now it's then it's it's minutes and minutes if you want to get the rest. The advantage then is if you want to make like a like if you want to use the bodies and the insides to make some sort of a Superstock you can and then freeze that out. But if you don't want if you want to buy the frozen meat Fine, let's talk about the frozen meat, which I can't vouch for the texture of it. But in a lobster roll it would probably be okay the texture of this stuff I got a whole foods. Maybe if I had done a high temp traditional cook it would have been okay but low temp it just fell apart on me I couldn't get it to work right anywho I would go and purchase a a meat or bread either a brand new stainless steel hacksaw or a meat you know saw and have it around anyway, it's gonna be useful for hams and whatnot. And then you can just saw the get really cool, get everything really cold and saw the two pound block of meat into portions. And then either Ziploc and get rid of the air or better yet vacuum pack the individual portions in the fridge. And then when it comes time to cook them just throw the individual servings of meat into into you know water inside the bag they'll throw out fairly quickly. And then you can cook as desired and making the lobster What do you think? Yeah, sounds like sounds good. He don't care. I don't care. Okay, now we got some more questions. I had it takes me longer to get my iPad now they had to change the password because my kids figured it out. They hate that you don't hate that internet. You don't know what I'm talking about. But like the kids, they break into your into your iPad all the time, and play stupid games that rocked their mind, etc, etc. Anyway, okay. Why it burns from Brooklyn, New York, Brooklyn, right saying Hey, Jack, Dave, Anastasia. I currently make seltzer in my apartment with the liter soda bottle techniques. So that's using a liter soda bottle, a 25 or 10 pound co2 tank and a carbonated cat. We go through it pretty quickly in the summer. So I'd like to upgrade to the carbonator system. I listened to the episode where you explain your home system and I would like to implement something similar but I have a few questions. Okay, so we're talking about people's is instead of having a system where you have to constantly make seltzer like a chump. So that would be either the bottle system or Soda Stream or similar Right? Which is like well, well above the super chump which is going to the store and buying seltzer which is if you live in New York City and have our awesome tap water, you know and you buy case after case to sell. So you're pretty much a jump on my right. Jump. Yeah, okay. Okay.

You said you have a mechanic carbonator but which model would be appropriate for our light non industrial use with the big bat Big Mac be fine or overkill? Also, how loud are these things and do they run constantly or only when seltzer is being dispensed? Okay, so, so when you're when you're buying a professional carbonator people, what you have is you have a little rotary vane pump. It's the same pump that similar pump, same company, procon, that's used in commercial espresso machines, right? And they will because what happens is is carbonator is a tank, it's fundamentally a tank and the tank is hooked up to high pressure co2. Now remember, you're carbonating water in a carbonator at like 100 psi, then the reason is, is that you're doing it at route with room temperature water. And so you need a much higher pressure than you would use if you were going to carbonate in a bottle, let's say right, okay, so, so here you have you have a high pressure tank and your water even if you have a very high pressure water system, which some people in the city do depending on kind of how high their building is where they are in the building, you're still not going to really top out much higher than like 60 psi. So what you need is you need a motor that can pump rather that can force under pressure the water through and into that tank and it sprays the water into the co2 tank so that it carbonates instantly. Then you have a hose that comes off and you dispense you need a good dispenser for it really good dispenser that people always chance on the dispenser and that's where they ruin their Seltzer, the chumps. There's also a very There's a special way to, to hook up a carburetor for the first time to get it to work. And if you know if anyone buys one, and they want me to come on and tell them how to hook it up, I'll tell them how to hook it up on the air, it's not difficult, but it'll take a couple of minutes longer than I have right now. Okay, so the choices you have the motors are all the same, and you already have the tank. So the difference in carburetors is the size of the reservoir that the seltzer is in and I would get the Big Mac, because it's going to turn on less. And that's what I used, I used to have a smaller one, and it just turned on a lot more often. So I would just get the Big Mac, because if you're going to have a dinner party, and someone's going to pull a picture of seltzer out of it, then you're going to wish you had the Big Mac just saying go for the Big Mac. Okay? Also, how loud are they? And do they run constantly, they don't run constantly, they what they there's a little float, like in a toilet, but not with toilet water, there's a float, that judges when the water is below a certain level. And when that happens, it kicks on. It fills it up, you know, to its final fill level and then turns off. So I'd say that, you know, it's cycles on every gallon or so of seltzer that you pull like, like something like three quarters or a gallon somewhere in that in that range. And how loud are they how loud they are depends entirely on the rate of water flow into the carbonator. So you need to filter the water that goes into the Caribbean or even New York City tap water which is famously you know, clean tasting and good. A lot of times some there can be chlorine in if they if they have an upstream problem with something they'll dose chlorine into the water and that makes seltzer taste like poison. So you got to get rid of that. Also your pipes, sometimes like throw sediment and other things into the water that can affect even minor taste effects in tap water get incredibly magnified by by cells to the seltzer making process. So you need a filter. The problem is, is that most filters when you when people when they hook them up, they hook them up with a really crappy water supply line such that they use some sort of three eighths flex cable into the filter, instead of like a half inch, you know full water sub copper water supply line. And what happens there is that when the seltzer is trying to pump in, it chokes up and when it chokes up, you get very small flow of water through your filter. So you actually want the coarsest filter you can that has the you know the the that provides the taste that you want. So you don't want like a super heavy duty like remove sis remove lead, you just want an odor and taste and chlorine removing filter. All right, so it chokes up and once it chokes up it starts cavitating when it cavitate it gets really really really loud and then when it comes to you'll know when it's time to change your filter. Because all of a sudden your carbonator will get really really loud when you have a fresh filter. It's fairly quiet if you keep it under the counter and keep the door closed in the cabinet that it's in. Another caveat when you install a new system, there's flux and crap in the in the in your copper lines from the soldering and just residue and stuff. You want to put that stuff through a filter you don't want that getting into your carburetor because then the waters gonna taste like poison for a while and also your first filter is going to clog within like a week or less and don't worry about it. Just the second filter you have in there is going to last a lot longer same if they go to I don't have an icemaker and really don't want to use the traditional ice chest for the Coldplay shit telling me man, I did that for 10 years I had a an ice bucket with my cold plate in it and I had to fill it every day with ice, but it's a hassle. It's a hassle. But I did it for 10 years. Are there any other techniques for chilling a waterline that don't require ice I'm considering modeling a cheap mini freezer to directly chill a water bath the cold plate is submerged in but maybe I'm overthinking this that won't work so well. You need ice because what's happening is is the actual melting of the ice. That is it's a melting of the ice that is providing the quick hit to make it cold. And so you really need melting ice, you could theoretically use only carbonate cold water and keep the carbonator in in a mini fridge and the water in a mini fridge. And then as long as your draw wasn't too low, you could do it but it's kind of a pain I'd really I would recommend if you have the money I can I currently have an undercounter Manitowoc ice machine that is freaking amazing. The cold plate fits right in the bottom of the icemaker and now I have fresh ice for drinks or cocktails or whatever else. And it just it automatically drains that that many Manitowoc undercounter ice machine is either the boardroom model, it's really home friendly, I would look at it. Otherwise, I have to think more if if none of these work you have to ask me again. I'll take more and also in your rig Do you run the coal play before after the carbonator I imagined I could get away with lower co2 pressure if the waterline is already cold going into the carbonate or correct Not really. Because you're it's not it's not a system where it carbonates the water now but you're not drinking that water for a long time. So if you were to if you were to keep the carbonate or in the fridge, then yeah, you could have a cold plate and you could and you could use a lower pressure and push it through the cold plate first to chill it down, carbonated and put it in but 99% Most people can't store the carburetor in the fridge but it's rather large. So what they do is is they carbonate room temperature water, which is why you need to be 100 psi, and then they chill it through the cold plate and then dispense. Anyway, if you have any more questions, Wyatt, give a shout him back to me and he says love the show and shouts to gun wash Jack shouts to gun wash.

Wow, it's the first time on this show.

Yeah, yeah. All right. I got one more question that I have to get to today. Do I have a couple minutes jack or no? A couple of minutes? Not really. Oh my god Jesper in Sweden. There's an auction that's going to end today like three minutes. Okay, go. Okay. I previously bought an old beauty rotary evaporator so I'm not gonna have time to explain to everyone what a rotor evaporator is vacuum still are an oxygen included with the base system. The condenser and all of this in the boiling flask and receiving flask and all that look up rotary evaporator on the Cooking issues want to know where I live I in Sweden, it's not that common to be able to get a cheap take to be able to get cheap laboratory equipment on auctions at least not what I've experienced. Moreover, beauty is a pretty expensive brand. And it's swift that's why and in hindsight, maybe I should have opted for a new complete i k Iike system instead don't they suck remember when we had to use that system and sucked it sucked it sucked it leaked I hated it. Remember that and a leaky road evap is bad flavor right there anyway, however now I have the RT 210 base and my questions are related to kidding the system to have it operational the same time one of those rare lab auctions are now taking place in my neighborhood, which closes door in a week on Wednesday, June 25 Jack which is why I had to get to it so it would be great if you can answer my question before that. My first choice is regards to vacuum pumps. I would I would like to have a diaphragm one together with a vacuum controller but the options do not have those instead they have a couple of rotary vane pumps. Now all the ones that you mentioned are Edwards brand Edwards are extremely extremely high quality vacuum pumps. However, they are way overkill for the rotary evaporator application that you need. If you can get them cheaply get them they're awesome but it's again way overkill are any especially the like the E one M 18 and 28 because they handle vapor very well and they have a ballast in them. So then your question is Are any of those rotary vane pumps a good choice in regards your opinion my main concerns is vapor and contamination. Should I buy a rotary vane pump and add some kind of inlet condenser A cold trap you can but that's a hassle. It's a real hassle, it'd be easier for you to find a diaphragm pump is going to do what you want. I use just a regular refrigerator pump which is a couple $100 refrigerator vacuum pump but it's not ideal either. Do I need something extra apart from the gas ballasts valve? Open? Nah, not really, you're gonna have to close the guesthouse valve, you're doing really super low temperature stuff. Another important topic related to the vacuum pump is how important is the vacuum controller. They're pretty expensive. And they do not have them at the auction. If you're not using a vacuum controller, how do you control the vacuum, you put a bleeder valve on the line so that you can control like a very elegant, like a multi turn needle valve to bleed air out on a tee and in line with the vacuum line. That's how you do it. But it's a hassle because you have to control it. You have to sit there and constantly control it and it's constantly pumping, which is also not ideal because you're because you're constantly pumping, you're sucking flavor out of your system. So I don't mean I've done it. That's how I used to do it. But I don't highly rec highly recommended. You also mentioned the recirculating cooler that you use for your chiller, here's the thing. That'll work. But if I looked at the specs on it, and at minus 10 C, which is what you're going to want to run at least it only does 120 watts of cooling. The main mistake people make with condensers is they do not have enough power to condense all the stuff that they can put that they can boil because the heater is it like 1000 Watts, and your condenser now is only providing 120 watts of cooling. What that means is your condenser is going to warm up significantly until it gets up to about 20 C. So I can give you more input on that next week. Because those options are over. That's my feedback on the auction items that you have. And you can get that pump cheap. I will get one of those pumps cheap, but it's not the same thing. I can also work more on a vacuum controller but the circulator is convenient to have around but don't expect it to do high volumes, you're only doing 120 watts at minus 10 C so don't expect to do high volumes rotary evaporator work around it, and Jesper. I'll get to the rest of your questions next week after the auction is over. This has been cooking issues.

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