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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This episode of Cooking issues is brought to you by Bob's Red Mill an employee owned company that has been offering organic stone ground products for decades. Their flowers and whole grains have the highest quality and are minimally processed at their stone mill in Oregon. Visit Bob's Red mill.com to shop their huge range of products use cooking issues 25 for 25% off your order

this is just coming to you live on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from pretty freakin late this time actually this Tassie right. You know, like you know, around the noon time hour until you know like just before one o'clock from reverse pizzeria in Bushwick. joined as usual with Anastasia the hammer Lopez, who by the way was here last week, just hiding out here like two minutes before you end. Sure sure, liar. Liar. Hey, David. Yeah, you were here and joined as usual by Dave in the booth. How you doing? Good about you. Hey, dude. Well, you know who I saw over the week? I checked you molecule. I saw Jackie Moloch I think I saw that on the interwebs. Oh, yeah. They have such a place on the interwebs where you can trace the whereabouts of people. Yes, he posted us. Nice. Anyway. Good to see him. He's having fun in DC. I think he misses New York though. Yeah, who wouldn't? Shout out to our friends in DC although yeah, great place. It's just wow, love it. It's just as nasty here as it is in DC right now from from a weather weather was. Well, this is a good segue. I hate and start saying I am completely bent over like stuff that I've learned over the past week. John diberi. Brother, they call in your questions to 718-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128. Speaking of the meat vending machines last week, this is not what I'm vent about. He says he's planning on opening some maybe one in New York so we can go vend our own meat. Would you get meat out of a venue? Yeah. Because you hate people anyway. So it's like all of them out of the equation. Yeah. Well, it's all the good parts about people, right? Somebody that she knows cares that she doesn't have to interact with. That's like the best of all worlds for Anastasia, for me, like, I'm like, you like interacting with people? No, it's like, I'm both people that once right? Sometimes I'm like, yeah, yeah, I just need this because you know, anyone that knows me knows, like, I am at my rudest. rudest but like most angry when I'm standing behind someone walking slowly, it just just bugs me so much. It's like, you know, oh, man in England. Which woman right and I'm so angry. There's that photo of me so angry. No just kept talking to her talking to her about apples. Well, we were on a trip to taste apples, you moron. Why are you talking about this thing? Saying that you came all you know, you flew across an ocean to another continent halfway around the world so that you could taste apples and you would have the balls. You have the temerity you have the chutzpah to talk to this lady about apples. Jerk. What a moron thing to say. I mean, seriously. First of all, I warned you. I'm Ben. So like to get your bed John Newbery, alright. So I was gonna say like, sometimes I like to interact with people. And then I like to have a normal interaction people discuss things with them, because I'm normally at that point, discussing things that are important to me, like apples, or like cheese or things like this. But you know, other times I'm like, Hey, give me my apples. Give me my cheese. I already know what I want. I gotta get out. You know what I mean? Like you don't say, so. Like you kind of want the BOTH Yeah. Oh, look who's back. Oh, yeah. We're talking about anastasius favorite pastime. The like there's two reasons she does this show. One. She cannot turn down free lunches. She can't turn them down. The other reason is she can gawk at people through the studio window at the at the crew here at Roberta's. That's the other reason that she doesn't anyway. So John Newbery this morning text John Newbery, by the way is, you know, writing a book now about cocktails was or is I don't know that the beverage director Momofuku? I don't know his current title I don't know. Known for many, many, many years, you know, was it PDT, etc, etc. Anyway? A bar a bartending man about town, let's just say. So he sends me a tweet this morning, sending me a link to a Washington Post article where everyone is going freaking ape, over Dragon's Breath. So Dragon's Breath, not dragons beard, the poll handled. Only Nick Huang, who is of Chinese extraction, can use stereotypical voices in a way that is socially acceptable. Anyway, so nastasiuk like, never fails to try to get me to be inappropriate, but it never fails to try it always fails to succeed anyway, always I don't leave. Oh, that kind of moment of that kind of thing. 100% She's always feels like she can get me to cross lots of other lines. There are lots of other lines that will cross anyway. Or a habitual line crossing. I believe you were thinking of Peter can our favorite punching bag and now Father? So anyway? So anyways, so John Newbery sends me this thing, people getting all like up in arms about Dragon's Breath, which is where you take something low in low and moisture, like the classic thing is marshmallows. You put them in liquid nitrogen, and then you freeze them down to liquid nitrogen temperatures, you put them in your mouth while they're still extremely cold. And when you exhale, you get all this condensation clouds. So it looks like you're kind of blowing smoke, right? And even Stasi you've done it a million times we've done it a million times like at Harvard or at demonstrations. I've done it with children I've done it with adults you don't talk to my right so yeah, yeah, marshmallows live in action. So these people aren't using marshmallows they're using what amounts to crunch berries you know crunch berries and stuff here like do you know that Did you know that the captain crunch corporation because everyone likes crunch berries so much? It's not Captain Crunch Corporation the brand which is what General Mills wants Captain Crunch they have a box now called oops all berries were you know who loves as Booker obviously. Oops, we didn't know what we was doing but we put millions of dollars behind it. Anyway, so they take oops, all berries looks like to make their toy marketing campaign. Yeah. Oops. You know, no one wants our oops is right is the assay for like, products are oops, oops trailing edge technology Booker and DAX welcome. So the they take it they freeze it liquid nitrogen and they serve it to youngsters at state fairs. The youngsters put it in their mouth and then they blow up smoke. Now a couple of problems with crunch berries as opposed to marshmallows is I don't know if you've ever Have you ever eaten Captain Crunch? Yeah, it treads inside your mouth. It's It's like eating tiny micro planes like so first of all, when it's that cold, you're probably reducing the sensation of excoriating your mouth so I wouldn't choose crunch berries or similar cereal as a thing but what you do need to choose is something that's low in moisture because as anybody that has heard me yell about this before, things that are extremely dry and contain a lot of air simply don't have enough energy stored in them to damage your to damage your tongue, right. So if I took an ice cube, or any sort of water based substance froze it down to liquid nitrogen temperatures and put it in my mouth, that is like Game Over man like totally Post ravak rip my tongue apart. But a marshmallow which is air and has very, very little water has an extremely low a low thermal mass and low specific heat, meaning it can't really do too much to my tongue one way or the other. So that it's a fun party trick to take the marshmallow stick in your mouth without all the trouble of blow out the smoke. Yeah, hi, everyone loves it, right. And the same reason why you can hold one of those marshmallows in your hand. Now, it's true. That, like this kind of technique was brought by the Spanish wave of the Spanish armada of chefs that, you know, became so popular here a while worldwide, really, but you know, well known in the States in the early 2000s. And back in those days, I was served something with too much water that had been put in liquid nitrogen by a Spanish chef, and it blew out my tongue for the whole evening. I was real pissed. I couldn't taste anything, but no permanent damage. So anyway, so nothing in particular has happened. But yet everyone is is completely up in arms about this because they say it's dangerous. I'll give you a couple of headlines. And John Berry brought this to my attention this morning. I'll give you a couple of headlines by this is by the New York Post. Oh, I hope they came up with a good one. Which you know, Public Enemy, a Public Enemy. The rap group famously said in 1991, founded in 1801, by Alexander Hamilton, that's 180 years of continuous effed up news. 190 years of continuous f dub news. America's oldest continuously published daily peace, and that was a decent, that's not my better way to use our president's terminology. That is not my opinion. That is the opinion of Public Enemy. Tell people why you'd want to write the headlines for the post. Oh, good. They have the best you met one of their you met one of their like, like when we like, right after 911 When we first started taking on the Taliban couples. I mean, that's a freaking great headline. Look, I'm like take something away it was it couples I like strong Pong. So here's my theory about the New York Post. Or, you know, the New York Post, what happens is, is they have some person who they only call on this person when something happens and they need a headline. So it like 2am You know, two or 3am something happens? Oh my god, we just we just bombed you know, Cabo with the, you know, the Taliban, the burning green. And then, uh, given the here's what happened. He's like, Bullseye hands up. I mean, like, this is the guy who's you can raise out of any like rouse out of any deep sleep. Give him give him what happened. And this person such a good pun, such a good puncher.

Bullseye, and I got you the book of New York Post headlines, and they are amazingly good. I can't remember all the Pope 102 Poop to Pope when? Yeah, when the Cardinal Ratzinger you know, now he's, he's still Pope. Where did he go back to being Ratzinger anyway, when he gave up being pope the headline to prove to Pope the Pope resigning the call on the Pope, right back to sleep because this person doesn't need a second shot. They come right out with the pundit anyway. So I love the post for that if not for their editorial content. So here's what they say. You know, the Pope. Sorry, the post. Dragon's Breath liquid nitrogen cereal is the latest deadly trend by Natalie O'Neill. This was a couple of weeks ago or a couple last week in July and July 31. Now the Stasi correct me if I'm wrong, but for a trend to be deadly. What's the one thing that needs to happen? People die? Yes. Yes. In order for something to be deadly, somebody needs to die and guess what has not happened no death no death but here's what here's what's not such a good headline. Dragon's Breath liquid nitrogen cereal may be somewhat dangerous weren't weren't right I mean, that's what they don't do. So the latest deadly trend and then the first line don't get burned by a trendy liquid nitrogen dip cereal dubbed Dragon's Breath get this that can melt your mouth and internal Oregon. Wow. Oh my gosh, so ridiculous. I'll go to the Washington Post, which has a longer still very heated but not quite as bad. I'll read from the from the Washington Post owned by Mr. Jones, his good friend, Jeff Bezos. Teads they're so great at finding innovative ways to cause bodily harm. First, they were eating Tide Pods then they were jumping out of moving vehicles to dance to the new Drake song. By the way. The Stasi has a SpaceX are giving themselves frostbite by spraying an entire can of deodorant on their skin, and now they're eating Dragon's Breath. A snack may with liquid nitrogen that can burn your mouth or cause respiratory distress if ingested incorrectly, it should not surprise you to learn that teens are ingesting it incorrectly. First of all the reporting here is just straight false and dumb. Here's what it says. I got data that later on in the article and you can look it up on the Washington Post this was I guess the seventh which is that today Yes, yeah. Okay. That's because when a person's skin or tissue comes into contact with liquid nitrogen according to the south Florida Sun Sentinel, by the way, the South Florida Sun Sentinel, well known for their scientific reporting good to know that Dave Oh, yeah, if you if you have a question on science or safety, you're going to want to go to the south Florida Sun Sentinel for the answer. I like how they they actually quote the South Florida Sun Sentinel on this fact liquid nitrogen can cause serious burns to skin cause deadly asphyxiation if inhaled. By the way if it's okay. It's liquid. It's what do they mean by inhaled I think what they mean is if you if you put yourself in a pure nitrogen environment, you will die, right anyway. It failed and can damage sight if it splashes or gets rubbed into the eyes. I now have an image of Anastasia holding me down and rubbing liquid nitrogen into my eyes somehow she has some sort of glow, and she somehow can take a liquid which inherently doesn't want to stick to me and somehow she is able to rub it into my eyes as though it's some sort of grease smear. rub it into your eyes. shops that sell it post warnings but they're not always heated. Alright, so then it goes on to say that in October, a 14 year old girl was sent to the hospital after touching the liquid nitrogen in the snack at the Pensacola interstate fair. The ER doctor had to cut the thumb open cut away the dead skin and get the infection out the girl's grandmother told the local ABC affiliate they had said Had we not come in and got her finger treated she could possibly have lost her thumb now here's what happened. This is the Washington Post quoting the sun sentinels quoting ABC news coverage of a local ABC affiliate quoting the grandmother quoting the ER physician about this girl is touching the liquid nitrogen right now. So like that is the level and this this this quote cycle has happened multiple times. So here's what happens people liquid nitrogen is used on purpose by dermatologists on the daily to freeze warts and such not on your skin and outside your cervix. Okay, okay. Okay, FYI, FYI. Now, if someone improperly did this and left liquid nitrogen in the cup, and this little girl grabbed a hold of the cup by the way, I've seen pictures of the cup the cups are plastic so they're not inherently dangerous in the way metal is because plastic also has a low you know, low specific heat, low thermal mass. So you probably would feel that it is cold in time to drop the cup. i This is coming from someone myself who who on the regular puts my hand into liquid nitrogen dented splashed on me on a daily basis. Okay, if you pick up briefly touch a plastic cup, your hands will register this. Oh, cold release. Now, if this little girl has the awesomeness to be like, I'm not letting go of my freaking Dragon's Breath candy, it's possible that she could get frostbite on her finger, I have gotten like frostbite on my hands from extended contact with metal containers much more dangerous, very easy to get a lot of frostbite with metal containers and liquid nitrogen. And that's happened to me to the worst I've ever had. And this is someone who deals on a daily basis, daily daily basis was I lost feeling in my thumb for about, I don't know, three or four days anyway. So. So let's say that she does have some sort of like localized bad contact burn from the liquid nitrogen, which I feel bad about that shouldn't have happened. That was an incorrect operator. Right? So the grandmother is saying that this is why it's so inaccurate. The grandmother says that the kid has an infection. There's no such bacteria on earth that says, Hey, yo, little girl's got like some frostbite on her finger. Let's have an infection happen in the time it takes grandma to get her to the ER. Right. So like there's clearly and I'm not trying to say anything. Like clearly the grandma was freaked out. The kid had a problem kid went to the ER not disputing any of this, but the language built around it that somehow she had an infection due to this and that her thumb was you're gonna get lost. Who knows what the doctor said to the grandma what the grandma said to the ABC local affiliate, who was then quoted by the Sun Sentinel, which then goes into the magisterial Washington Post, write thesis, and then please else, then if they caught another thing in later it's always Florida and Stasi in late July. A murder man. Yeah, what do you say? Florida man? Yeah, it's gonna be a good story when it starts off with Florida man. In late July a mother in St. Augustine Florida took her son to the ER AF listen to the way that this is written took her son to the ER after the dragon's breath here is triggered in this triggered me when I read it triggered a massive asthma attack. Here's his inside addition is who they're quoting here spoke with a young man who inadvertently burned the inside of his mouth until it bled. Alright, so we're we're now down to inside edition. So I went and Yeah, cuz the captain crunch. You eat too much Captain Crunch without milk, which is why I tell Booker. You should put some milk on that freaking thing to soften it up. Otherwise you're you're you're taking sandpaper to the inside of your freaking mouth. By the way. I've eaten kiwis and told my mouth bled right? And no one's like, oh my god, Kirin's. Don't do it. Or like, you know, the Warhead Challenge. warheads until their mouth bleeds because it consuming so much acid no one's like bandwagons people aren't like being warheads. But anyway, warheads, good candy in moderation. So I went on to read both The Sun sentinels coverage of the local ABC affiliate, which I've already gotten gone into, by the way, I don't even think she spoke to the ABC thing. The grandmother told Facebook the story so we're looking at a Facebook throught like, like ABC got to the story through Facebook's into the Russians. To Russian Russian. Okay.

Oh my god. Here's the one with the with Oh, no, this is the asthma one. Okay. So we're in St. Augustine. Mother goes on Facebook, tell us how her son Johnny tried to treat at a kiosk inside the Avenues Mall in Jacksonville, Florida. He has mild asthma, she said. But on the 40 minute drive home, he started coughing uncontrollably and had trouble breathing. So here's a little bit of I'm sure you guys have heard of this post hoc ergo propter hoc right after this. Therefore, because of this lady shows up at the Avenues Mall with her son Gianni says Johnny's like my I want the dragon's breath, my MA. She gives him this thing. Johnny has mild asthma now. Keep in mind, it's the summertime and Johnny's in St. Augustine, Florida. You think maybe that's causing the asthma anyway, minute drive. He's on a 40 minute drive home and who knows what kind of air conditioned car after I've been to the Mall of America. But what happens is the kid has an asthma attack. Right? And he goes to the nearest fire station and hospital. I don't know fire station paramedic stabilized the boy for the trip to the hospital. He's treated and he's doing fine. Right. So the mother's like, you know what must have caused that asthma attack. Anastasia? Dragon's Breath, obviously, because it's the only new thing I saw today that are is vaccines. Yeah. Oh, so conspiracy theorists love it. So my point is, is that look, I was when I was a kid. I was that Johnny right. I had asthma would go into uncontrollable asthma attacks. That might be the title of the episode today. I was that I was that Johnny, right. But I didn't have the benefit when I was a child of seeing anything new because I grew up in the 70s when there was nothing new but bell bottoms. bell bottoms triggered my asthma attack. And quite quite a number of times. This was in the days before inhalers. I would have to go to the hospital and get jacked up on epinephrine. You think I'm going crazy. Now, you shouldn't see me when I was jacked up on epinephrine as a friggin nine year old in like 1979 or 1980. Right? Right, that that is a kid that's all jacked up and bent out of shape, right? So a little bit of post hoc ergo propter. hoc makes it into the Washington Post as Dragon's Breath causes asthma. So as we can see, are there dangers to liquid nitrogen? Yes. Is anything that was written in this article? True? No. And it just goes to show that I mean, look, that one girl's finger was burned. I'm sure right. That's possible, probable, but like the like the like imputing all of these dangers to the snack wrong. Some guy on whatever it was, like instant jerk YouTube or whatever it was, like his mouth bleeds after he eats like 18 boatloads of oops all berries that have been frozen to liquid nitrogen temperature very plausible. Tama berries, right, John the berries on the berries, and then, you know, a kid has asthma attack. I understand how scary it is to have an asthma attack as someone who was hospitalized multiple times with asthma as a child, it's super scary, but to blame it on the liquid nitrogen just nothing to back that up. So we have just a whole bunch of garbage is being piled on but you know who's going to pay for it? Anyone out there cooking with or using liquid nitrogen or frankly anyone doing anything new or innovative or interesting at all? Because when the SNCF, right, it's the people doing the new stuff, they get hosed the hardest let us take a commercial break and come back with more being read my mind that was right back with more anger on cooking issues

it's time for our Bob's Red Mill moment where we put anastasius cooking improvisational skills to the test this week secret ingredient is organic oats Now, which one we're going to do here because we Bob's Red Mill has various different oats, they have your standard flaked oats, they have your steel cut oats, right, so for steel cut steel cut, yeah. Do you like steel cut oats? I've had them in my house. Okay, so as you all know steel cut oats are the ones that still look like oats, they haven't been flaked out, they take longer to cook they got more texture than your regular flaked oats. Alright, Anastasia, tell us what you'd make oatmeal for one. Wow, that's super interesting, you know people, this is what I have to work with. So steel cut oats are good. If you want to maintain I like traditional texture of steel cut oats. It's not the kind of standard out that you get. But I think it's a very good. It's a very good changeup to kind of the flaked oats, and steel cut oats are also very good in recipes like scrapple or in like a traditional haggis kind of a situation where you want them to absorb moisture over long period of time. I like them a lot. These good. Thanks to Bob's Red Mill for supporting cooking issues, visit Bob's Red mill.com to shop their huge range of products. Use the code cooking 25 for 25% off your order that's cooking no space the number two the number five and we're back. Oh by the way, those are painful. Oh painful because he's like, I would take the oats and I will make oatmeal with it. No, those are my favorite where it's blank for one. Yeah, oatmeal for one. Yeah, can't let whatever else everybody Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you have anything you need to do at night, you're like, she's like you're cramping my plans. She's like oatmeal. For one. You can pin my plans and watching bachelorette with the girls. Anyway, I want to say one thing. I have nothing to do with the bar. Please don't ask me for reservations. I only drink for free. She does drink for free. That is true. By the way, Darren wrote in a comment about koji asking us about koji and stocks and clarification. I called in our no resident koji expert, our quest Ricci, and he is not he's not been able to get his expert on this particular thing. So, Darren, hopefully we'll get your information soon. Should I do the anger? Should I do the question? Question then anger? Yeah, question first, then anger question and anger. Alright, see if I can get I gotta mellow out and then get round back up later. And that's good, right? Otherwise, it's like too much blood pressure, too much anger, too much anger. People don't want to stress me out. I'm stressing, I'm stressing you out when you live in Brooklyn. So that takes a lot. You know, I mean, so who writes in? So this is a question about, by the way about pickles. Right? So for those of you that have not lived or like don't exist on the planet Earth, like pickles are a means not only to make something delicious, but to take something that is, you know, in season or right now, and preserve it for later. So you can have your sweet pickles, you can have your lactic acid pickles, you can have your vinegar, pickles, blah, blah, blah. And so this question is a question a user a listener asked us about chef's bet chefsteps.com There are pickling recipes. Okay. How do I go low on sugar, acid and temperature? Everyone wants to go low on all that right? Because they want to pickle but they want something that's as close to the original product as possible. Right? This is by the way, this is how a lot of traditional things like cam right how dry cured ham has gotten muted, mutated into kind of city hands because as technology improves, people tend to want things with less of a cure dried and or whatever. Anyway, I digress. How Low Can I go on sugar, acid and temperature when home canning fruit while still having a safe product. I'm a big fan of ChefSteps cvwd pickling recipes and techniques. And I use it regularly for vegetables, vegetables. However my family doesn't love the taste of a vinegar based sweet Brian for fruit. And I've been looking for a lemon juice based alternative. Straight up serving lemon for vinegar would be safe. While it's true because lemon juice. I don't know about the pH but the the actual like acidity levels are in the same range. I don't actually know the pH of vinegar 5% Vinegar, but it would be too acidic and overwhelmingly flavored. I won't second guess Douglas Baldwins calculations on the parameters of the brine, which is a brix of 38 meaning out of every kilo of brine 30 He ate or 380 grams of that would be sugar, the balance water and a pH of 3.2. By the way, Douglas Baldwin is a professor of mathematics is somewhere in Colorado, or at least was the last time I saw him. And he, he did a lot of the early calculations where he kind of solved simplified versions of some of the differential equations involved for Suvi cooking. And his initial calculations are what a lot of the Suvi calculators that you find on, you know, on the App Store on the internet are based on so he has a long history and doing the math and actually figuring out what's going on in food safety and in CVD cooking in general. And he he partnered with Nathan Myhrvold back in the Modernist Cuisine days, and is working with ChefSteps at the time. So in other words, he knows what he's talking about when it comes to this. I won't second guess Douglas Baldwin's calculations on the parameters of the brine. But it seems to me it was meant to be safe. In other words, Douglas Baldwin's recipe was meant to be safe, regardless of the relative proportions of fruit to brine, and the size of the produce that you use, which makes sense when I'm publishing a recipe for the mass audience. But I assume it can be tweaked a bit. I'm not an expert. But I know my way around the logarithms. So basically, he's just shooting for he's giving a bunch of parameters, which I won't give you here, because they're gonna bore you to bore you to tears, probably. And you probably forget them. Although should I? Oh, we got two minutes. So use your time wisely. You know what? So basically, he's the point that David is trying to make, right, is that you guys going to increase the pH, right, to get it just into the levels where it's safe, right? So he's going to try to get a 3.4 Ph Brian by two and a certain Brix level, I forget what he was shooting for. But he's going to get a certain Brix level by actually calculating how much fruit that he's going to add, right and what the pH of the brine is going to be and trying to figure out the equilibrium between the fruit and the Brian Right. So the argument here is, is that you overdo the brine, because the fruit that you add to it is assumed to have a pH, you know, you know, basically be a pH of seven neutral, which is not true, they're almost always acidic, and have no sugar, which is also almost not not true, almost always not true. And if you're adding a whole bunch of brine, right, like imagine you added, you know, one gram of fruit to a kilo of brine, obviously, that gram of fruit is not going to push the pH one way or the other. So he's arguing that by controlling these things better, you can make a safe product.

So rather than me second guessing, ChefSteps, I called Chris Young, we played a bunch of phone tag, he graciously got in touch with Charlie Shaw, the food scientists at ChefSteps and Douglas Baldwin, and they got back to us with an answer. So I will read it to you. We put our heads together. That is Charlie Shawn Douglas Baldwin, we put our heads together. And here's what we were thinking. David is right, he can reduce the acidity and the brix and still make a safe product. What he may be compromising on as he reduces is he reduces the shelf life, especially at room temperature. The shelf life should be fairly long in the fridge. Shelf Life is awfully hard to predict and may depend on the fruit veg spices used the workspace where he's working, etc, etc. The brine Awa proposed only brings the water activity down to point nine 5%. That's not enough to help too much when it comes to shelf life. So shelf life is important. And you like a lower level of sweetness, you should. So if you want to low sweetness, you should increase the amount of time you're cooking it because he only wants to cook it at 75 degrees Celsius. So here's another thing when you're cooking, there's there's, it's this is the multiple hurdle effect. So you have one hurdle is temperature, right? So you're cooking something to a specific temperature to kill bacteria, some of that bacteria is harmful. And some of that bacteria just reduces the shelf life, you're also increasing the acidity because the acidity lowering the pH is a hurdle that bacteria have to jump over to start multiplying, you're also in decreasing the water activity by increasing the sugar. So that is also inhibiting the bacteria multiple levels of inhibition. So there's inhibition to make a product safe and there's inhibition to stop spoilage ie increase improve the shelf life. At the final equal equilibrium of 85 degrees, they recommend 85 degrees Celsius for two minutes at the brine that they're proposing. This is getting in the weeds a little bit, but it was the he wants to do with 75. The reason 85 C is used for these vegetables 85 C is where the government publishes the curves of how things are or at least where ChefSteps has their curves of how bacteria get killed. At 85 C cook for a long time pectin will break down if pectin breaks down you could add calcium. I think he said he didn't want to you can add calcium to strengthen the packet and so that 85 C, you're not getting any pectin softening but if you don't want to add calcium because of flavor issues, right and you don't want to cook at 85 C because you're worried about softening you can drop it to 75 C, especially if you add a little calcium and not get, you know, radical softening of the pectin and fruit and vegetables. However, when you're when you're killing things, right, first of all, you have to measure the core temperature, which you can't possibly know unless you have a rig that you've tested with beforehand, right? So you need to know how long you're cooking the core, the inside the inside of your jar, right. So let's say you have something that's at five degrees C have a thermal death curve called thermal death curve, and you're looking for a certain D level, ie D level is one D means that I've killed 90% of the bacteria that are involved. So then you do that, again, you reduced by a factor of 10, factor 10 factor of 10. So a lot of people look at that D, throw some D's on it, just bought a kick those DS on it anyway. So you want about a five d, which is like a five log log reduction. Now here's the other problem, when you shift that thermal curve, right, when you're no longer looking at 85, there's what's called a Z level. And the Z level is how fast that thermal curve shoots up or down one log level. So So Douglas Baldwin, and you know, Shaw, they assume that most bacteria that you're looking at have a Zillah z number of roughly between five and 10 degrees, so he wants to cook something that's 10 degrees below the recommended temperature, the temperature they have occur for. So let's say that the Z is 10. That means that 75 degrees C, it takes 10 times longer to get the same level of bacterial death. So if it was one minute, at 85, or two minutes at 85, it's going to be 20 minutes, right. But an equally valid curve might be five, so every five degrees lower, you are 10, you know, a factor of 10 longer which case it would take 200 minutes, right? So in order to be safe at those levels at 75 degrees C with those lower numbers, you'd have to cook it for a much longer time on the order of 100 times longer, right. And so if that, if that's acceptable to you, that's fine. Just be aware that when you're looking at z values, you can't keep going on down infinity, there's a certain point at which bacteria begin dying, and only then our Z values. Only actually even further up into that curve, they become valid, because you could continue in lowering 10 degrees and all of a sudden, you're in a bacterial growth zone. So z values only work for like one or two z levels, not for infinite Z levels. Maybe they weren't for one or two z levels also depends on where in the curve you hit. Anyway, long answer short. So do I have any anger time left or No? Three minutes? You got time for a quick call? Actually? Oh, caller you're on the air.

Hi, Dave. I was just wondering if you could real quick, since I know you have to go talk about any Ethiopian cookbooks that you would recommend. And

yeah, oh, I don't have any Ethiopian cookbooks. And therefore I cannot recommend them. But now, you have made me think I cannot believe that. I don't have any Ethiopian cookbooks. I have recipes with Ethiopian. I have books with Ethiopian recipes in them. But I have no 100% Ethiopian cookbook, I'm sure they are out there. Now it has been at least 10 years since I last looked for them, at least 10. And so I mean, it's been 20 years since I've lived in a neighborhood that had, you know a huge density of Ethiopian restaurants such that I was eating Ethiopian food once or twice a week. Back then, in the late 90s. There were to my knowledge, no Ethiopian cookbooks around there. Were you know, Jessica Harris had books with Ethiopian recipes in it. But there were no Ethiopian cookbooks. It was only recently like the past maybe 10 years that they've had like recipe books that are exclusively let's say Senegalese food. I'm sure they're there now. And I feel incredibly embarrassed. I don't have one at the at the tip of my tongue. I'll ask Peter, Peter Kim, who spent a lot of time in Ethiopia because his wife was posted there at the UN I'm sure he would know. And I'll get I'll definitely get that information up and either put it on Twitter or talk about it. Next week. I mean, I love Ethiopian food. meitheal being food is so awesome. Did you have any that you have that you don't like?

No know, I just moved to a neighborhood with a lot of Ethiopian cuisine and my rent went way up. And so I'm looking at making like, more like lentil pulses kind of dishes. So I thought that that would be a good solution.

And you're gonna go about making your own in JIRA.

I have not, but that's something that I heard. It's very challenging to do. Yeah, I

mean, people say it's challenging. I've never tried it. I don't know. I mean, the thing is that the grain, the grain that makes in JIRA, one of the grain that most people don't do it's TEF let's say it's tough, right? Right. So by the way, you know who sells tough don't you? You know, so it's tough. Hey, Dave in the booth, you know who sells tough Bob's Red Mill you are correct. You can't get that from Bob Bob's Red Mill. Most people do not do 100% teff, in JIRA, so TEF is sourdough. So it depends on how sour you want it. What's it called? Oh my god, the names went on my head that Karen works for up in Bournemouth up in Hot Bread Kitchen fabric kitchen, they do 100% in JIRA, TEF that's real sour that I liked. But most of the, you know, most of the injera that I used to get in my old neighborhood was not like hyper sour. So, you know, for those of you that never had Ethiopian cuisine, it's kind of like, imagine a cross between a large floppy crepe and kind of like a crumpet, right? Because it's got the bubbles on the one side, it's floppy, kind of like a crepe, so it's not like crispy like a dose and anyway, it's fantastic. But that to me, like I would worry about that get some tough and think about that. I'm sure online, there's a bunch of people who like have injurious stuff. Are you? Are you more interested in just the mains? Or do you mean to me, Ethiopian food without in JIRA is like, is like Nastasia without hatred? You know what I mean? It's like that. I'm being told that I have to get off the freakin air. I'll try to find some Ethiopian cookbooks and if not, awesome suggestion what we'll talk to Peter, and we'll talk to Peter and what we'll We'll answer that next week. And I'll get to my anger about Ziploc bags, and reduced oxygen packaging and the New York City Department of Health. I'll reserve my anger for next week. So you can be Stay tuned for more anger if you tune in next week on cooking issues.

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