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

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

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

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

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We'll be covering everything from how to style your food, to how to license IP, to developing your own ideas, and some tips from the masters of how to host your own show.

Yeah, it's a little bit of conversation, how to and how do you do the things that you do in color media, which I'm so excited about? I love so many of the guests that are coming on this season. We have talent from Food Network from Vice media eater refinery 29

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enjoy food the way nature intended Alaska seafood wild natural and sustainable for more information visit wild Alaska seafood.com

Hello and welcome to cooking issues this is yours coming to you live on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday format or no like you know like 1215 to like you know 45 Like one you know from versity to be in Bushwick joined as usual Anastasia the hammer Lopez and we got Dave in the booth How you doing

good things are good enough to attend start.

And oh it's because the Stasi is all mad at me because we'll talk about that a minute. We also have my bar partner and evil cocktail overlord Don Lee, secret secret overlord secret overlord. But official partner natural partner

we can talk about that now

seek secret overlord. So call in your questions to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 Anastasia said to me this morning by first of all she's mad at me because we have colliding emails we have colliding, I've colliding meetings Don and I need to go get some actual Don't worry I cancelled the when I went we're all good. And he died and I need to get some actual like, you know building crap worked on in advance of us opening the new bar existing conditions. Because you know, we're members actually booked and access member of new lab which Anastasia by the way, new lab, a collaborative. I hate collaborations more than almost anything is collaborating with random people. But this is kind of a collaborative workspace. Right done

sort of tricks up.

Yeah. And so like if like, you know, Don and I are members of it for the for the shops, like you know, they have a shop bot I can use they they have a larger laser cutter than Danone's they have 3d printers that I don't own. So like between all of this, you know, they have a spray painting booth. They have a vinyl cutter, all this kind of stuff that you would want a full workshop, you know, stuff that we would want to be able to access here in New York but can't because New York is not a reasonable place to do anything. You only New York City is the worst place to actually make or do anything. It is a frigging horror nightmare. And I've known this since I stupidly moved to New York City to become a sculpture guy. There's no worse job on Earth than being an unsuccessful large metal sculptor in New York City. You know, I'm saying anyway, that's what I came to grad school to do here but it's hard to move stuff around. Long story short, we're part of this collaborative space. But other people have asked about it and said, I'm really joined for the shops I joined for the community

because a lot of lonely people out there you know, that will want community

Hold on, I

have really friends, families,

do community, whatever. I don't like I don't like. Like, I think I think like, I like the people in new lab. They're very nice. I like all the people that knew that this is not indicative of new lab per se. But I think all of these things are like they're faux munities they're not real communities. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, I have enough trouble keeping in touch with my actual friends, family and co workers. Like, I'm going to have a you problem. Yeah. People actually like to spend yp that's a that's a that's a it's an MP.

That's a YP. Well, well, if I'm saying if you're saying it, it's an MP.

Alright, so you're saying people, that's why people enjoy the social media?

Well, it's a as people have gotten more and more into like a distributed workplace where they're not really working from an office with coworkers, they get lonely they want to work with other people, they want to be around other folks other like minded people. So it's the rise of co working spaces like we work and new lab is just another version of that where it's a little bit more focused and it has all these shops as you know, the the reason why we're there

and Stassi Can you imagine actually having to sit next next to like minded people every day to you and to me, like Oh, that'd be the worst thing ever. Worst.

The horrible v&a We're already pushing the limits here. Yes, true. Yeah,

I mean, even the Stasi and I are like, oil and water isn't right. It's more like water and sodium. That's not true. Because we are very similar. No, yes. Yes.

I was thinking more like water and Napa burning on top of the water.

Which one of us is the Napa water in life?

We all know who that is. Oh,

anyway, well let you let the listeners choose for themselves who gets to be the Nath in this in this scenario. But look, the truth of the matter is that Anastasia enjoys nothing more than getting me veal very bluntly angry. There's like, it basically seems to me that she has shopped a good five or six years off of my life just for her own humor. Like just like in order for her to like crack a smile. She will she will do anything to make my blood boil say that something is broken. That was a long time ago. Yeah, like the last time you saw me. Back at the MCI you still do that all the time. You'll say bad things that have I see you do it to other people too. And the great thing about Anastasia she gets you to cosign on doing this to other people. So she also makes you into a worse person. That's the best thing I think about Anastasia she has the ability like to grant you know, when they go low, she will make you go lower.

brings out the worst in all of us. Yeah,

she has like this like ability to like, take sync you down to your base level. Like if you want to know. Like, what, like your low level of operation is she'll take you right there. Like right there to take you there. Oh my god, she'll take you there. Anyway, we're gonna have to pay some ASCAP. And speaking of which, Don and I are you know dealing with and we've done has decided, first of all, I never realized what a pain in the butt it is to go full legit on the music you play. Are you guys legit? Anastasia at the flyer of pasta? No, no, listen, but just so you know, this is what's irritating me right? So as I'm sure any of you that have actually researched this, no, you cannot and Dave You know, you know, as a musical dude. You know as a as a sound engineer as whatever, you know, whatever. Whichever one of your hats you wish to wear here that we cannot simply just play music. Even if you quote unquote own said music. You can't do

it. Right? Well, if you owned it, it would be no problem. Well,

I mean, own your copy of it is what I'm saying.

You own the copy though. for personal consumption personal.

Copyright to it. No, no difference there. No, but here's

the here's the nightmare right? So the problem is is that you own these CDs you bought them or a CD with the helmet, you own the mp3 or whatever CDs you you own the vinyl you have the you know you you have the wax cylinders, you own the wax cylinders. Now, whatever technology you're using to like get your music, like you own those does not give you the right to play them in public. Except you can play radio, or you can play anything that you own a copy of for your workers as long as as long as like guests and customers can't hear it. Right. That's one you're allowed to do that. That's not public, to you're allowed to play radio and or television if your bar is under I think 3500 square feet. And if you have fewer than I forget what the number is like five or six TVs you're allowed to play broadcast TV and broadcast radio. However, that's it that's those are the only things if you own a jukebox, you can buy a single jukebox license from a company that does that for jukeboxes. If you want to play music, you are hosed. You need to if you want to do legitimately, you have to buy, not one, not two, three separate licenses to cover almost almost everything you have to buy your ASCAP. You have to buy your BMI. And what's the other one day see? CCAP whatever, what's it called?

I don't think it's CCAP.

Something like that, though. It's the third one. Well, that's those are the two biggest though. But you have to get the third one because like, like in any given song, like there could be like part of the rights could be owned by BMI because the this song writer is with BMI. This one's with ASCAP. This one's with the third one's convoluted mess. All right. So you have to in the real life, you have to buy all three, but you can't buy all three from one person, like you can't like walk up to one guy and be like, hey, Vinnie, I want to get three licenses, you know, for the whole thing. He's like, Hey, okay, and then you take a walk around the corner, and we'll see about you come back, I'll give it we'll laminate it anyway. But you can't do that, right. And literally, like if you're, if you're a big enough player, or if for some reason you get under somebody's skin, someone like BMI will go and let's say you have an ASCAP license, someone from BMI will show up at your bar. They will, you know, soak up your booze and customer service on BMI is nickel. And then though listen to all the songs and they'll wait for you to play a song that is not you know, from BMI it's, you know, it's not from ASCAP or BMI, and it's get this $750 Plus lawyers fees per song that you play maximum, right, like that's Anastasia. So. So anyway, so the fact the matter is you have to play all three. So I went on the website this morning, I went on ASCAP. And I'm like, How much is it going to cost me ASCAP? I just went to ASCAP. I didn't bother with the other two yet. And they were like, well, you know, tell me a little bit about your something first, before we, you know, how big are you? What's your name? Where are you? What's your address? You know what I mean? Like, they really want to know a bunch of information before they even give you the price. Right? If you're in New York City, it's gonna be like, Well, I mean, a lot of it has to do with your square footage. They want to know how big your they really don't care, the square footage, they want to know how many seats you have, how many nights a week you're going to play music, they want to know what kind of establishment you are. And they also wanted to beat things are you going to have live music because here's the kicker, if you hire a musician to come in and play at your bar, unless they own all of the rights to everything they are playing, you have to pay a much higher licensing fee for that music. So for a lot in order for them to play covers, for example, covers or their own songs if they don't own all of the publishing. Right, right. Right. So it's a that's a much higher fee. So if you're a no live music venue, and, you know, if you're looking at somewhere on the order of between 515 $100 per license per year, in that range, for non live music, depending on the size of your establishment, and how many hours a week you're open, and how many people are going to go live, right. So that's, let's say it's 15 1515, that's three, that's $4,500 a year, there is still a possibility that you could get sued by somebody else, but pretty much you're totally covered at that point. Now, the other way you can get around this. This is for people who are actually going to try to go legit with their music for some reason I went down this rabbit hole I was just going to Wild West it like they do at some other places that will not mention who they are. But some other places where I used to have worked and or maybe been you know involved with that play music in the wild west of the Wild West style. First of all, you should never stream music at your location illegally. Satellite Radio considered there are two radio you're not allowed to play your if you're under a certain you're under a certain size. So you can play radio and pasta flyer satellite radio like Sirius No, no, you're not allowed to specifically you're not allowed to play satellite radio, you can buy commercial satellite radio, where you are allowed to and it's not that much more. But it's just you can only play from those channels. Now, here's the deal. So Spotify. Now there's a bunch of these businesses. Spotify is one of them where they're like, hey, Spotify for business, right? And so you can have in quotes, access to the entire Spotify song list right at your business. But the deal dealio on it is and you can even get this Dave, you can upload your own playlist to it right? As long as it's more than three hours, as long as it's more than three hours. Because why don?

Because they are. They're doing a music license under radio like Pandora. So they shuffled the songs and you don't get to pick the actual play order, nor can you inject the song midstream. You have to just get the shuffle version. And that

was stupid.

Right Dave? Right, that sucks. And it's such a stupid workaround, because they're letting you pick three hours of very specific songs. Right? You know, you can I could play you know, like if I've put if I want if I want to go like two short Mac Dre like loonies and then why I want to go down, you know, further south in California and then I want to scoot down to like, you know, Texas, you know, do some do some, you know, I don't know, I don't know what choose your Texas He's a Texas rapper. I don't know to pick one pull off. I don't know why I chose that one. And then like, go over to like Atlanta and then like, go up. You don't I mean, you can't because you can't choose the freakin order. He's just gonna randomly shuffle it, but it lets you choose the songs but it doesn't let you choose the order. This is so stupid right Dave? Yep. Yeah, and we are we tested this because Don and I know it's real job to you don't have to convince me to it's real cheap. It's like $25 A month or 26 between between 17 and $30 a month depending on how you sign up and when you sign up that law,

but like So is this what you're running into with Booker index right now? Is this what you're trying to say?

Let's not the new book or index its existing conditions, man. Excuse

me, sir.

Come on, man. Get with the freaking conditions, man. Yeah, this is what we're running into. And as for me, as for Don, Don doesn't care that much about shuffle or not shuffle? That's not the as they say, on francais, the hill that he wants to die on, you know what I mean? But like,

many hills I want to die on not this one. Yeah, but like,

there's some nice ones around here.

Oh, my God. We'll get into that later. This neighborhood. Dave is a trash pit. I hate this place.

They don't target. You try to park in this place. You're trying to park here? No, no drive.

I don't drive. It took your license at night on draft day. I

love you so I wouldn't have to drive anymore. This is great. You left feeling do you have to drive in Philly? Do you absolutely have to drive in Philly. There's like two subway lines. And they are. Yeah, it

seems like there's also crazy. Yeah.

Not to go too far on a tangent. But if you're driving, I'm like, this is gonna sound ridiculous. But like I try to reduce my internal stress level. I try. I try right. So I don't want to get road rage out. Like I don't appreciate getting road rage out. Right? So can you ever drive a taxi drivers and stuff here? And like you can tell there's two kinds those who will have an aneurysm fall over dead and whatnot. But then there's the people who are just like, man. Like, I think that's the only that's the only sustainable so you don't care whether it's their life is sustainable or not. That's the reason why you know that

type that stop at yellow lights and like, keep going, what

about the kind that they always hits the accelerator and the brake? So you're like, inside the taxi, it sounds like yeah, like those, those guys are the worst. They're not getting sick, because they know when their foots about to hit the brake.

You know, what I hate is when I'm walking, and there's a car about to cross through an intersection and it stops and it's trying to wave me through and I'm like trying to wave them through like no, you're in the car. Just all you have to do is step on the gas and you're through and one second, like I'm gonna have to walk across this intersection. It's just much more efficient for you to go go. Right,

right, well, well, yes, I think that's accurate. But Anastasia, I'm for my taxi driver having a sustainable or Uber driver having a sustainable life. So I'd prefer if they could zoom out a little bit.

I just like to take this moment to encourage anyone that's currently listening live to call in with your grips on it really grinds my gears.

Here's the thing, if you if you're going to pull out in front of someone who is going the exact like vision zero speed limit that we have in New York, the exact speed limit, and you pull out directly in front of them such that they have to slam on the brakes. You are obliged to go the speed limit. You do not pull in front of somebody and then crawl looking for a freaking parking space. True or False. True. Okay. Caller you're on the air.

Hey, Dave, this is Mark. Colin, how you doing everybody?

All right, how you doing?

Doing well. And I'm just stuck at a crossroads here. Do a lot of woodfired oven cooking. No,

you're not literally at a crossroads right now.

I'm standing in the middle of the road right now. Grind your gear. I'm just I'm stuck with a recipe trying to work on and spent a lot of pies and sear a lot of meats in there and it comes out really great. But when I get to fried chicken I've been stuck because I tried to do in like an open sort of like an air fried chicken. But obviously it's it's burning up so fast. So I tried to do it in a Dutch oven. Right? And what I'm getting is like a pre pre cooked Suvi chicken, all dark meat. And when you bite into it, it's just perfectly cooked tastes great. But all the breading comes off in one bite.

Gotcha. To find a way. Okay, okay, this is the freaking this is like perfect, because this is the argument that Kenji Lopez alt has all the time and he's just doing it wrong. First of all, air frying. Let's brine the meat. Yeah, right. Here's the thing about frying. Here's the thing about there's this group of people, they're evil and I don't want you to speak to them anymore who are worried with their frying foods that they're worried about the oil content, just freaking deal with the oil content and make the sucker tastes good? And if you're really worried about it, then eat your freaking poached skinless chicken breast garbage, right? Frying is God's cooking Listen, yeah, it's delicious. This is the way God was like I've given you a medium that will not dilute the flavor of your product, I've given you a medium that instead of making something soggy will make it crunchy. I have made this medium a liquid so that it can surround every nook and cranny of your food. And I've made this medium so that they can get to a high enough temperature to make everything crunchy. I have given you this, why if God gives you this, would you mess with it, you see what I'm saying? And like air frying in some miserable, miserable freaking attempt to take a breading spray some puny amount of Pam or other oil garbage on the outside. And then using the management of in to make it crunchy. This is

the only the only reason I approached it that way in the first place. Because I didn't know about the safety aspect of putting four inches of oil in a Dutch oven with a lid next to an open flame.

Right? Well, that's a good question. And we'll talk about that one in a second. Cuz I don't know what the little do what the lip mean, look, there is a group of people who believe that putting the lid on is going to drastically increase the temperature and or the pressure not true. What is true, though it you could slightly I've never done this study. So it's interesting. I don't know as the way frying works is when the when the product is immersed in oil. And this is the problem with air frying too is that when you're quote unquote, I won't even want to use it when you're air destroying your food, what happens is, is that locally, that oil plus bread coating can get up to a very high temperature and in other places it doesn't. And that's why you get scorched areas and blonde areas when you're using that kind of a technique unless you have a very, very fast impingement oven, which you don't because you're using like, you know, another one of another one of the great cooking techniques would, right, so you're not gonna be able to do that. And so you're gonna get scorched parts, and you're gonna get blonde parts. Now, oil obviously doesn't have that because as the water is boiling out of your product, right, it's one getting crispy, it's to like modulating the temperature of the inside of the food to make it lower. And three, it's convecting a bunch of stuff around such that your oil is pretty much within the area of the of the actual product going to be a relatively uniform temperature in a large fryer, you know, you have a big pit in the bottom of it called a cold zone. And that cold zone is where all of your breading drops down to. So that doesn't scorch, right? So you're not actually you don't want to even temperature over the whole kettle. But from the place of heat, which is where the tubes and a tube fryer are up. It's a fairly consistent temperature because of all the convection going on. Right. So. So that's about the fried now there's safety with the lid. The question is, I again, I don't know what effect because you are going to increase the relative humidity in there, right by having the lid on but I can see why you would want to have the lid on from a safety perspective because of the sloshing and whatnot, right. And I mean, I doubt you're going to get enough radiant heat to actually flash fire the oil that quickly assuming the chicken is frying. As soon as the chicken goes, like if you are let's say you were making tortilla chips instead of chickens, right. So the way you make a tortilla chip, if you want to do a good job is is that you put it into relatively high enough temperature oil to boil the water, but low enough temperature such that the outsides not going to go overcooked before you get rid of all the water because when you're cooking tortilla chips, the name of the game is complete moisture removal, right. And so like if you over fire it tortilla chip, you'll find that the outside browns and the inside still isn't cooked yet. And this is a sad tortilla chip. So you tend not to go super high on your temperature when you're doing tortillas. And tortillas and potato chips are a few of the things that you can actually do a perfect fried from a cold start, right? Okay, and one where you can overload your oil. If you're not worried about like water damage in your oil, which you really shouldn't be over short terms. Like you can overload your oil on things like potato chips and tortilla chips because you actually want the temperature to drop down a bit, right? But once you get to the end of a tortilla chip and you see the bubbling starts to slow down indicating you've gotten rid of most of water, right I don't know then whether or not because you're not going to have as much convective force and as much liquid coming off of it whether at that point the radiant heat from your oven becomes a risk with the top of the oil. I don't know I've never tested it okay. But to your problem on adhesion, when you said you are getting low temperature cooked chicken does that mean that you are cooking at low temperature and this is back to my gripe with Kenji Lopez alt? Or are you low camping the chicken yourself.

I take usually about eight pieces a leg inside of time 65 C for about two hours. And it's marinated overnight and buttermilk and then I poach it and then I dry it and then I've tried three different bread batches with the spices I've used double zero flour I've used all purpose I've used buckwheat groats I've tried to use brown rice and it just they all come out slightly different and very nice looking and gray tasting it just as soon as you bite into it it all slips and falls right off madni

for some reason when you said buttermilk I had the WAM song go through my head, but a meal instead of Jitterbug buttermilk. So wham you know, George Michael recipes, right? Anyway. Absolutely. Yeah. Freda that's different. That's with Franklin anyway, but we are going to know it's going into the different I was going into the into the song she sings in the Blues Brothers. When you said freedom, I heard George Michael and then my mind jumped to Aretha Franklin singing in the Blues Brothers, which is maybe the greatest rock and roll movie of all time. You don't like the Blues Brothers?

I don't think it's the greatest rock and roll movie.

What's the greatest rock'n'roll movie of all time? I don't get back. I'll give you a minute while I talk about this chicken. So here's the thing. I don't have spinal tap is Spinal Tap. No, I mean, when I say rock and roll movie, I mean, like the rock and roll the rock and roll in it like the blues the rock and roll r&b. I mean, like, I mean, like, dude, like, Stonehenge is an interesting song. Right? As good as Ray Charles singing shake your Tailfeather? No, no, no, no. It's not, you know, as good as John Lee Hooker doing? Ah, no, not not. It's not as good as James Brown in the church. No, as good as Aretha Franklin. Like, you know, stepping from behind cooking the four fried chickens in the toaster white bread? No, just not. You know, as Spinal Tap now we can make an argument over whether Spinal Tap is funnier than the Blues Brothers. This is not an argument that I'm willing to have. Because I feel like you know, you wouldn't ask me to choose between Booker and DAX

Well, no, no. Yeah. Anyway,

so back then chicken was thought at all the word Anastasia? Well, because she's a Sophie's Choice kind of a lady. Oh, she's

still gainfully employed.

Worker. Yeah. Anastasia is Booker's employer and here's the problem. If you're going to employ somebody's son, you have to set some ground rules because if you've been friends with them for a long time, right you don't Booker's like, Can I change my shift? Can I do them like she's your freakin boss, Booker, you're not allowed to do that. Anyway, back to the chicken. But occasion chicken adhesion. So first thing I will say on this is buttermilk. Please do an assessment when you're going to do a long term. Are you low temping in the buttermilk or not? Yes. Okay. Here's what I will say. If you're gonna do a very hard fry on it. It might not be I'm just gonna go point by point and at the end, I will address your problem. The issue with acidic I actually when I do my chickens, especially when I'm going to load tempt them. I do not use acidic brines. I'll use salt, obviously, because salt add some protection against overcooking. And I will use sugar to balance the salt so it's not as sharp. I use milk. Right. And I don't know why I've never done this side by side. It's just ever since I was you know, ever since I can remember I've used milk and myself. But the reason I don't use butter milk, I'll use acid. If I'm going to do Tandoor right, if I'm going to pound thin and hit hard, or if I'm only going to, if I'm only going to soak it for a couple of hours and then cook it right away. I'll use acidic when I say acidic, like I'll use yogurt. I'll use lemon juice in a tandoor situation, and I'm pretty much a yogurt lemon juice kind of person in or I can do a buttermilk. But I want you to just assess for yourself whether or not the texture of the meat gets too mushy, right? Because what the acid is going to do is break down the fibers of the chicken it will make it soft, for sure. Right. So if you're having problems with it being like kind of hard and dry, for sure, buttermilk is going to make it softer, but just do a side by side and test to see whether or not you actually if you're going to load template right if you're going to cook it traditionally, this is why buttermilk marinade are so good and traditional fried chicken so like, if you go to somebody's house, and their breasts are perpetually dry, they're probably not brining it and they could probably use some buttermilk because they're overcooking the bejesus out of their chicken breasts anyway, right? But if you're going to do low temperature and fast fry, consider doing like either. I mean, I've never done a water soaks. I can't say that but consider doing a milk soak instead of a buttermilk and choose whichever one you like better. I'm not here to tell you it's better or worse. I'm here to tell you the thing. But the answer to what I've

actually you mentioned on an earlier show that you when you do low temp fried chicken, you do milk and sugar. So I tried both the butter milk and the milk. But the results were the same with the breading falling off.

Yeah, I'm just doing my flavor the inside. Here's what here's here's my thing about the breading, here's where I get to the the actual reason you called in heroin long later The thing is, you must you must remove the The chicken from the bags or from whatever you're putting it in while they are hot, you must put them on racks, put them into a speed rack and let them dry for let them flash off all of their moisture and let the outside get tacky before you bred them after you bred them. They can then sit for as long as you want and can be refrigerator when are you doing that step?

The first step that you mentioned I actually did 24 hours uncovered on a drying rack because I got so tired of that like it may it's got to be moisture has to be the problem we pull them hi, I let them air dry in a refrigerator uncovered for a day. But I did not bread and let this the breading sit overnight and become tacky. And that's what a spice rep mentioned to try. But I didn't know what your thoughts were on kind of letting it sit in the breading, you know becomes moist and then actually like pasty Yeah. Oh, hell yeah.

Yeah. But no, you're letting the end the first part. You're letting him flash off when they're hot. Right? Don't let the bags cool.

No, no, as soon as they're done cooking drain, pat dry with paper towels in air dry overnight, but then I haven't yet. Let that I should after that first date and bread and let it become really tacky. I think that I would like to try that. But I wanted your thoughts. Yeah,

try that. And then also the regimen that I use is, um, so I find it very difficult to properly spice, straight flour. Right? It's very hard. So typically what I'll do is I'll spice I do I do pretty much straight flour for the dust. You know, if you are worried about it, you can add some of the higher tech starches to it. I never bother. But you can Chris code or whatever people, whatever the kids are using these days. And then I always spice the buttermilk egg mixture. So that the and I don't know whether or not my lack of adhesion problems have to do with my breading mixture or not. So I'll just tell you what it is. I go into straight flour, and then my buttermilk mixture is a it's about I think it's one egg per is it one egg, one egg per cup of buttermilk. Right. And then I add both soda. The reason I add soda is it neutralizes the acidity in the buttermilk if you don't fully so people, there are people on the internet who say things like it only takes a half teaspoon of baking soda to completely neutralize two cups. But don't listen to these people. Because the fact of the matter is, is not only do you need to neutralize the acidity, you actually need to push your mixture into the basic realm so that the sucker Browns right if you if you have a buttermilk mixture, and you do not use soda, right, if you use only powder and you only use the you only use powder and not soda, it will never brown properly because it's too acidic. All right,

the witches is it baking powder or baking soda because I wrote down baking powder from a previous episode. At

lowest dose you need that you must use both. That's the key. So you use soda and use powder. Right and I gotta be honest, I'd love to give you a measurement, but I do it by the book or the food and wine, food and wine like 15 years ago or 16 years ago printed my recipe so it's in there and I bother you know, look up Dave artl Fried Chicken food and wine, whatever. And but then I that's where I add salt and pepper and spice if you want to go spicy, I add it all to the buttermilk. So it's in the flour, dredge distrait flour dredge, then into the buttermilk, then back into the flour. That's the regimen that the regimen that I use.

So it's a double bread and you and you have no adhesion problems.

I don't know well presently considered double I go flour, liquid flour, okay. And then you can let it sit usually let it sit for you know, whatever I do it like, you know, way early in the day, and then I pull it out and fry it. And the advantage there is you know, obviously the inside of the chickens cooked so all you have to worry about is the outside. I mean that's the advantage of it. Anyone can you know if you're willing to sit there and you know, like Sean Brock, you know, and when Josh Ozersky visited Sean Brock back when he was still alive, you know, Sean Brock did that thing where he would cover the pot and lift the pot cover the pot and lift the pot to get the moisture just right on the crust. There's what I'm saying. I don't really know 100% What the What like exactly how the effect of covering it is but it does change the moisture level in there. And probably therefore slightly the temperature I've never done it like whether the evaporative cooling off the surface changes like do you actually get that 1015 degrees difference by covering uncovering who knows not me. So the so you know if you want to sit there and adjust I used to back before I Did lo tip, the way I would have to do it is I would fire up my fryer. And I would do all the chicken first, I would start the breasts first at the lowest temperature cook them all through, because I was buying whole chickens. And so I had to cook the breasts whether I wanted to or not. And then I would go to the thighs and the leg balls because I only cook leg balls, I don't cook legs with bones in them, because my family doesn't enjoy that. And then after that, then I will go to fries and rings and you know, jacket. But you know, now I can just go in any order I want, you know, any all around the town. But listen, if you're actually having problems, like with this suggestion, getting your adhesion call back, and then I'll have a mental argument with or a verbal argument with myself and we'll try to figure it out. Because this is the gripe that people like Kenji Lopez alt have about it. It's just I've never had a problem. I cook a lot of I cook a lot of fried chicken, I would think that if like, you know, they started coming off like the hoods of trucks, you know, the like, like, like, if it was like, you know, cars shedding their skin, like, I would be like, dang, I gotta change that it just hasn't been a problem. And I'm a fairly observant guy. You know what I'm saying? What would

you what would you say about using a Dutch oven with like, a like, not as much oil. So it's more like a pan fry. So halfway through, you have to flip it.

What's the advantage of that? That's less oil,

because less oil then you'd have to worry about doing it commercially, though.

So like,

you know, woodfire oven.

Yeah, but you're doing it. You're doing it commercially. You're doing it at home?

Well, I'm preparing to open a nano brewery here in Pittsburgh. I have let's nano have a window into my backyard.

What's Nano? What defines nano versus micro? Is it a batch size? Is it a brew size,

order of magnitude?

It's like a three three barrel system with probably eight taps.

But like but then what are you brewing? Like what size vessel? Are you fermenting? Are you fermenting like in a swanky keg size? fermenter

it's just it's just this standard three barrels. It's a microbrewery system probably a poor buzzword.

Now like as I like anything nano except for like, nano means good word Nano, nano anyway. I mean, the advantages at home of using less oil are that you use less oil. The disadvantage is a commercially is going to go bad faster, right? So commercially,

just get a deep fryer.

If he wants to do it in the wood oven as part if the stick is all the stuff cooked in the oven, including my fried chicken

home and everything's coming out of that oven. And I did try like just a regular cast iron skillet, and to do the pan fry. But what what seemed to happen is the unexposed parts of the chicken have a we got the you know, the leopard in, you know the charring of the certain spots of the flower that weren't submerged. Yeah,

because you've got radiant heat. See, the reason that works in a in a stovetop scenario is because you don't have radiant heat hitting from above. Right? Here's,

it's kicking up the dome of the ovens probably sitting around a 1200 degrees, right? Yeah, the floor is probably around my 889 100. So

So for safety, right. Another reason for the lid here, now you're telling me your temperatures is. The problem is, is if you've ever like hung out above a fryer for a long time, which I highly recommend, right as one does, you get covered with a oil mist, right because like oil gets volatilized and that's actually going to be the danger if you locally overheat and you get the stuff into like if you're going thin, like if you're going in a skillet, I think you get a much higher danger of making an oil burst cloud you know above the above the pan, you know what I mean? Then if you're doing it your way. So I think covering is definitely the way to go in this in this scenario. Also from

a long term safety perspective. Make sure you clean out and maintain your hoods between the the carbon that's going up there and the oil mist that's gonna go up there, you're gonna fire he's outside. Still the same thing you don't know the ovens inside.

Oh, the ovens inside.

I'm outside but the oven will be inside and vented directly on it through an outside wall,

you move the oven to the center of the crossroad.

That's originally I thought he needed help jacking his oven out of the crossroad because cars were honking for like miles behind him. Here's another thing I'll say like take a break in a minute. My words was alright, here's another thing. I mean, obviously, you know this, you're doing this I think got like, you know, get you know, you need your chimney cleaned out or your flue or whatever cleaned out on a regular basis. But I think you know a lot of people because you burn an ungodly amount of wood when you're actually using wood to cook and I think there's a lot of temptation to use under seasoned wood because you know, you haven't planned in advance or the woods not seasoned enough. And you're obviously going to get a lot a I don't know if you know this, but if if you look up the number of BTUs of heat you get per core heard of wood. If the wood is not properly seasoned if you use actual green, which no one does, but actual green wood, like half of the BTUs are used in heating and and vaporizing the water that's in the wood on the order of half. I mean, it depends, like very high BTUs like very high BTW you would like hickory, like probably not a full half because it's probably the same amount of water and hickory as there isn't a crappy wood like birch, which has a much lower BTUs per pound than hickory does. But the Greenwood you get a much lower use out of it because you're spending all of that energy heating water in the wood. Secondly, you're really gunking up your flue with with that stuff. And so you want to make sure that you have you know, it's worth a little bit more to get wood that season properly. And not from some joker who drops you off stuff that they just chopped this season. You know what I'm saying? Yes, sir. Yep. I'm sure you already knew that. But I'm just saying that for other people.