Apocalypse Plans: OG Cooking Issues Crew

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Cooking Issues with Dave Arnold

Episode: Apocalypse Plans: OG Cooking Issues Crew
Date: April 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

This lively episode of "Cooking Issues" with Dave Arnold brings together the original crew in the Manhattan studio (with Quinn remote from the “upper left”). The team banters through a series of food, cooking, and general life questions from listeners, sharing culinary experiments (emu eggs and brain empanadas), inside jokes, and their trademark blend of deep food nerdery and irreverent chat. The core theme is kitchen experimentation and problem-solving, with recurring rants about modern appliances, apocalypse escape strategies, and the joy/frustration of making money from food inventions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. OG Crew Reunion & Catch-Up (00:11–08:39)

• Opening with all the regulars (minus Quinn, who dials in virtually). Everyone catches up—Nastasia is in NYC from LA, "Jackie Molecules" brings weather and a special gift, and there's playful teasing about west coast vs. east coast drinking habits.
• Memorable Moment: Dave’s riff on bringing “martyr” energy and the joys of the full crew's presence (01:27):
  “Strong martyr. Everyone loves a martyr. Not true, people. Not true.” – Dave (01:31)

2. The Legendary Meat-Shaped Stone (02:21–05:26)

• Jackie gifts Dave a "meat-shaped stone" fridge magnet from Taipei’s National Museum—a famed artifact resembling tong pork belly, now immortalized in Dave’s “Meatshapestone” Instagram handle.
  • Discussion on how art and food trends morph and iterate:
    “I think eventually it’ll turn into a meatball.” – Dave (04:26)
  • The prospect of artist-chef collaborations for creative reinterpretations.

3. West Coast vs. East Coast Food/Drink Culture (05:26–07:41)

• The team debates cocktail hour times and drinking cultures.
  • Notable Quote:
    “We don’t drink as much as you guys drink here.” – Nastasia (05:55)
    “Says the person who goes for drinks at five.” – Dave (06:15)

4. Listener/Host Life Updates & Museum Tours (07:41–09:01)

• DC vs. NYC jokes, memorable museum experiences, and reflections on how crowds and lines have changed over decades.

5. Emu Egg Culinary Adventures (09:01–20:07)

• Quinn shares this week’s experiment: Spanish tortilla made with emu eggs, discussing emu egg procurement and the evolving “emu bubble.”
  • Science of Emu Eggs: Emu egg flavor is milder (“less eggy”), which lets other ingredients shine. The texture is more viscous, leading to a creamy consistency when slightly undercooked (16:06–16:40).
  • Hilarious Aside: The horror of a hypothetical "world's biggest balut" from an emu egg (10:13–10:46).
  • Discussion about the allocation system for rare eggs, hatching mishaps, and the ethics of animal consumption.

6. Food Ethics, Hypocrisy & Killing for Art (12:12–14:14)

• Dave recounts his own experience euthanizing frogs for an art piece and the hypocrisy he encountered from suppliers who raise animals for slaughter yet judge the timing or method.

7. Gastronomy Deep Dive: Spanish Tortilla and Egg Science (14:14–19:41)

• Technique for emu-egg Spanish tortilla: one well-set, one creamy.
• Debates the terminology: Should Spanish "tortilla" yield to the Mexican definition?
• Dave questions the chemical reason for pizza crust blistering and egg overcooking (15:00; 16:36), suggesting overcooking an emu egg “for science.”

8. Beans, Braised Lamb, Book Launches, and MCDLTs (20:45–23:22)

• John made beans (Rancho Gordo style—famed for never discounting beans, per a “radio hardball” anecdote).
• Dave plugs George Motz’s new burger book and riffs on the legendary McDLT packaging designed to keep “the hot side hot and the cool side cool.”

9. The Harsh Economic Reality of Food Invention (23:22–32:18)

• Discussion around the non-viability of the BDX cocktail cube venture. The math just doesn’t support niche, low-margin products:
  • “That’s not capitalism.” – Jackie (31:19)
  • “Unless you’re making huge—if you’re doing something inexpensive, you need to sell skads.” – Dave (32:09)
• Reflection on why Dave and Nastasia don’t just call the product a “design object” to boost sales.

10. Kitchen Tech: Induction-Compatible Donabes & Induction Rings (32:36–34:39)

• Donabe pots marketed as “induction-compatible” embed an iron plate—not a glaze or iron-rich clay.
• Induction adapter rings are a “scam”—heat transfer is poor, and they risk damaging gear.

11. Pizza Science: Blistered Crusts (28:45–31:18)

• Cold, long fermentation likely causes micro-blisters in pizza crust by trapping additional CO2 in the dough.
• The “baking nerd” segment echoes Dave’s general skepticism toward unproven culinary lore.

12. Apocalypse Escape Plans (35:28–40:26)

• The team riff on New York City apocalypse strategies:
  • Can you rescue your family with a rooftop parachute rig? No chance.
  • Wealthy NYC parents can “rent” a Zodiac boat (Plan B Marine), but you can’t use it for fun, only for “emergencies”—another scam.
  • Memorable Quote:
    “The move is pick a good album, then put it on and have a cocktail.” – Jackie (38:19)

13. Insurance & The Real World (39:34–40:26)

• The group relives post-Hurricane Sandy insurance woes—no payout if a utility employee caused the outage (“go sue Con Ed”).

14. Deep Ingredient Nerdom: Ultrasperse, Ultratex, and Starches (41:05–43:15)

• Pre-gelatinized starches like Ultrasperse and Ultratex can thicken drinks or foods cold, without clumping.
  • Tech Note: Ultrasperse flows/disperses better than Ultratex (42:07)
  • Practical Uses: Instant thickening; great for cold liquids.

15. Popcorn Oil: Culinary Possibilities (43:15–44:31)

• Dave contemplates using movie-theater butter-flavored popcorn oil for other foods (“What would a pancake cooked in that taste like?!”), inspiring a brainstorm of wacky applications, including in corn chowder, burgers, and as a mayo.

16. Eating Brains: Risks and Cultural Traditions (44:31–46:43)

• The gang shares their experiences eating brains (veal, rabbit, etc.).
  • Dave abstains, wary of prions (“the next Jakob Creutzfeldt variant… will toast you”).
  • Cultural practices around consuming brains and their real medical risk are discussed with tongue-in-cheek morbidity.
  • “What do you think the risk level is of emu brain?” – Quinn (44:34)

17. TV Antennas, Combis, and Ovens (49:38–54:07)

• Listener asks for a replacement for ANOVA countertop oven. No good/affordable alternatives exist with true combi (moisture) features.
  • Breville Smart Oven praised for versatility, despite limitations.
  • Breville Pizzaiolo: great but slow for back-to-back pies unless you own multiples!

18. Fluid Gels in Desserts (54:07–56:00)

• Coffee fluid gels: better as plate components or stabilized fillings rather than as “dips.”
• Fluid gels can also stabilize whipped creams and other dessert components (even for several days).

19. Getting a Foot in the Bar World (56:00–57:27)

• Listener’s plan to start doing professional prep at top SF bars leads to team advice:
  • Befriend staff first; recognize the monotony of repetitive prep.
  • Key Tip (Nastasia, 56:00): “I also wouldn't work at your favorite bar because then you'll hate it.”
  • Start somewhere less emotional to “learn before you burn out.”

20. Food Science & Gimmicks: Popping Popcorn with Heat Guns (57:27–58:53)

• Can you pop “bonsai tree” popcorn with heat guns? Not realistically—team tested, no dice.

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Notable Quotes

• “There is no way to the Meat Shapestone Instagram other than through me.” – Dave (05:05)
• “That’s not capitalism.” – Jackie (31:19)
• “If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense.” – Jackie quoting rap lyrics (25:19)
• “I just need more small irritants in my life.” – Dave (33:56)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:11–08:39 — Crew catch-up, intro, gifts, and museum chat
• 09:01–20:07 — Emu egg experiments, balut horror, animal ethics
• 20:45–23:22 — Beans, cookbooks, McDLT memories
• 23:22–32:18 — The economics of food invention, BDX cube woes
• 32:36–34:39 — Induction cookware truth bombs
• 35:28–40:26 — Apocalypse plans and boat-renting for emergencies
• 41:05–43:15 — Starch science: Ultrasperse/Ultratex
• 44:31–46:43 — Prions, eating brain, culture, and risk
• 49:38–54:07 — ANOVA oven replacement discussion
• 54:07–56:00 — Fluid gels in desserts and baking
• 56:00–57:27 — Advice for breaking into kitchen/bar work
• 57:27–58:53 — Popcorn popping by heat gun? Nope.

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Tone & Style

The episode is unscripted, rambling, and often hilarious, with in-jokes, playful digs, irreverent tangents, and deep technical dives. The team’s camaraderie and willingness to veer wildly off-topic are a big part of the show’s G-rated anarchic charm.

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Final Thoughts

For fans and newcomers alike, this episode delivers classic "Cooking Issues": madcap culinary experimentation, gadget geekery, existential New York banter, and sharp (if sometimes cynical) career and product advice. If you want to know whether it’s worth designing a better emu egg balut, how to escape the apocalypse, or just nerd out about pizza blistering and starch chemistry, this is your hour.

Transcript

[A]

Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New York City newsstand studios. The gang is all here. We got the whole freaking crew in the studio today. Welcome, guys. I'm gonna start from the back of the. Well, Quinn's not here.

[B]

Yeah, true.

[A]

Yeah, Quinn's not here. He's in the upper left, though. Quinn, you there in the upper left?

[C]

I am here in the upper left.

[A]

You're holding it down. Well, sorry you can't be part of the whole party down here, but we got Nastasia, the Hammer, Lopez in the back of the back.

[B]

Hi.

[A]

No, nice. Even when you're here, I can't hear you. It's nice.

[B]

Yeah, I know. Is my mic working?

[A]

Yeah. Now you're gonna just lob bombs. See, this is what I miss. Like, Nastasia just sitting there giving me the death stare and, like, lobbing a bomb over the top of my head. And then coming slightly closer to me, we got Jackie Molecules.

[D]

What's up?

[A]

Now, listen, so Nastasia's here tonight, today to do one of her west coast dinners on the east coast, and she looks excited.

[D]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

You brought the nice weather with you. Mm, yeah, yeah. Love it. She brings the rain with her. What's that cartoon character where there's always a cloud over the rain?

[B]

Right?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Strong, that's who. My grandfather. Nobody minds. Nobody cares. Pathetic.

[D]

Don't worry about me.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Good character.

[D]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Strong martyr. Everyone loves a martyr. Not true, people. Not true. I got John right here. Back. Back from the great state of Connecticut. Small state, best day wearing. For some reason, I don't think he's changed his shirt since St. Patrick's Day. He's just been. He is wearing a St. Patrick's Day shirt, though.

[E]

Patty's Pub, for those who get it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And behind me, rocking the panels, Joe Hazen. Hey, what's up? Great to see everyone. Yeah, yeah. All right, so if any of you out there listening on Patreon have a question for the crew, you can call it in. 2917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. But before I start, I want to say Jackie Molecules brought me a gift from Taiwan that is from the museum. What's the actual title of that museum? The National.

[D]

It's just the National Museum.

[A]

Yeah. It's a sick museum, right?

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

It's crazy.

[D]

Very cool museum.

[A]

It's a great, like, if you're, if you're ever in Taipei, people go, you know, go to the great bars, go eat all the awesome food, do all that stuff. Go to the museum. You know what I mean? If you have a spare second, go to the museum. Or more than a second. But he brought me what maybe they greatest piece of museum swag I've ever received. Two of them, actually. I don't know if you can see this. Where's the camera? A refrigerator magnet of. And you've heard about it on the show before. If you listen. The meat shaped stone. So this is, this is a representation of the meat shaped stone. So to recap, I own meat shaped stone. Instagram handle. I own that. That's me. And so what I want to have happen, but I never will what I want to have happen. See, they discovered this stone in the shape of tong pork. Right. And so they have it there and everybody stands in line, Me included. Jack, I guess.

[D]

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's like the big attraction.

[A]

Yeah. And this is almost. I mean, it's a little bigger than this, but this is basically life size.

[D]

It's pretty close.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's a tiny stone that looks like pork and like a good crispy pork belly.

[D]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[A]

And you know, it's a soft top. It's a soft top. It's not like hyper crispy soft top. Pretty. Which I also enjoy.

[D]

It's like before a finish. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Well, you know, like, there's an honor to a soft, unctuous pork skin that is not meant to be crispy. We don't understand that here because we're like, isn't it crispy? Same like with us in apples. Like, as a culture, we can't tolerate it. You know what I mean? But yeah, so then you go to the. Did you go to the restaurant? I forgot to ask you, did you go to the restaurant afterwards?

[D]

No, I did not.

[A]

They have a restaurant that serves the meat. Shapes don't shape meat. And so then my goal is just keep doing this. Nastasi, you should help me with this with part of your dinners. Get the chefs to do one and then get an artist to come to your thing. Make that and see how many iterations on the Instagram we can do. I think it's gonna turn into a meatball. I think eventually it will turn into a meatball.

[D]

Yeah, it has to.

[A]

Like, an artist will start rounding it out and then the chef will just start making it more and eventually it'll go into a meatball.

[D]

Well, if you don't tell anybody the reference, it could end up being lasagna. There's a lot of ways that somebody could, like on the fifth copy iteration, look at the photo or the drawing and say, is that. What is that?

[A]

Right, Right. It's true. But my feeling is that it will either end up being flat or spherical. Like one of those two things. I don't think that there's, like, I don't think that the odds are you're gonna get a cube.

[E]

True.

[A]

Although, you know what? I can see lasagna. I can see someone being like, this is a slice of lasagna.

[D]

Right, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, maybe.

[A]

Anyway, if anyone wants to do this with us, I own Meat Shapestone, so you have to go through me. Like, there is no way to the Meat Shapestone Instagram other than through me. Unless you want to be like meatshapestone196@, you know, hotmail dot not planted his flag there. Yeah, it's like, you know, as soon as I had the idea, I was like, I took it. You know, it's weird.

[B]

We can do cocktail hour at 5:30 on the west coast, but we have to start dinner here at like, cocktails at 7:00 here.

[A]

Yeah, we know why. Because we work out here.

[D]

Suckers.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, imagine. I try to imagine, I go to my wife, be like, oh, yeah, we're gonna go to this. We're gonna go get cocktails. Oh, yeah, when? Okay, when? Five?

[D]

What?

[B]

That doesn't sound good.

[D]

Sounds good to me.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we don't drink as much as you guys drink here.

[A]

That's also true. What? Based on what? When was the last time you guys went out here? Last night.

[D]

I mean, last night this week.

[A]

Yeah. You're going somewhere. That's the thing. You're going somewhere. You're gonna be drinking more. You know what I mean?

[B]

I think here you're like, oh, what are we gonna do tonight? We're gonna drink, you know.

[A]

Says the person who goes for drinks at five.

[B]

Yeah, but it's. I don't know, it's different. Jack, describe it.

[D]

I agree.

[A]

I mean, you're like, bringing full Italian vibes. We don't drink anything. Bring us another bottle of wine. What are you, an alcoholic? Bring me a bottle of wine, you, cocktail makes you an alcoholic. Morvino. Full Italian. Anyway, speaking of drinking, last night I did again the chartreuse hot chocolate event, which was postponed twice because of vicious weather. And I was like, no one's gonna come. It's gonna Be spring. No one's gonna want hot chocolate anymore. And actually so it wasn't Nastasia, it was Chartreuse that brought the cold weather back to us so that we could have an effective hot chocolate. And it was.

[D]

I was gonna say, this is your spring, this is winter.

[A]

Yeah, okay. Craw.

[D]

That's true.

[E]

California people.

[D]

Funny.

[A]

Yeah. You know what I mean? Or he's in dc, which is like, you know, straight up malarial hell hole, you know.

[D]

That's very fair.

[A]

Yeah. Or you know, like, if you don't want that, if you don't want like that swampy DC action. Don't they literally have a place called like Swampy Bottoms? Foggy Bottom.

[D]

Foggy Bottoms, yes.

[A]

And then.

[D]

That's a terrible name.

[A]

Yeah, terrible. And then, you know, if you don't want that, you can go to like the mall, which is like a dust bowl. Do they still have that like unpaved dust hole that you have to walk on so that your legs get all freaking dusty?

[D]

Yeah, yeah, there's DC's great.

[A]

Uh huh.

[D]

I won't stand for the besmirching of dc.

[A]

You will not?

[D]

No.

[E]

It's a good city.

[D]

It's, you know. Yeah.

[A]

I've not been in years.

[D]

You gotta know where to go.

[A]

The last time I went was when my kids were still pretty young and we took them to all the sites and there's just too many people in the United States. So that the lines that were like 20 minutes long when I was a kid are now like two hours long just. Cause there's like literally twice as many of us as there were, you know, in the 70s.

[D]

Yeah, that's fair.

[E]

But we did have a good time at nmek when we went.

[A]

Remember when was that?

[E]

With Jessica.

[A]

Weren't you? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

[E]

2018.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the most recent time I've been there. But I didn't stay, I didn't go out. We were in and out on the train. In, out. That was a great tour. Who was the guy that gave us a tour?

[E]

The guy? I can't remember, but it was absolutely exceptional.

[A]

It was a phenomenal tour.

[E]

Like this museum experience I've ever had in my life.

[A]

You walk into a museum tour and you're like, oh, I'm gonna get a tour. Nice. And then you're with a guy who's like, yeah, my dad was. Yeah.

[E]

Like all this room down here is dedicated to my dad. Yeah, that's me, Martin Luther King.

[A]

Yeah, I was nuts. Nuts. Great museum.

[C]

Anyway.

[A]

All right, so you guys got anything to push a rep for the week? Quinn, since you're alone out there in the ether, what do you got for us? Not alone, but you know what I mean. You're not in the studio this week.

[C]

Yeah, I'm adrift in the void of the Internet.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

This week we did another emu egg preparation. I think you might like this one, Dave.

[A]

Okay, let me ask you a question before you tell me. Are you single handedly keeping this emu farmer in business?

[C]

No, apparently he's. They're selling like fertilized eggs as well. You have to buy four.

[A]

Now, are those to eat or to raise loot?

[C]

More emu farms are like, are likely to be popping up.

[A]

Okay, it sounds like an emu bubble.

[D]

They're NFTs.

[C]

I mean, the first time we got eggs, we were on a wait list.

[A]

Wow.

[E]

Never would have expected that.

[A]

Wait, so wait, so what I'm getting from you before you go to the prep, because I know I keep interrupting, I want to hear the prep, but is like you're on like allocation. So now when the farmer offers you the emu egg, you have to take it or you're off the list. You're off the list. It's like the old Turley wine list. Or like the, you know, like if you don't take. If you don't take their babies in, you don't get their reals in. You just gotta stay on the list. Is that what it is? So you take everything? Like fertilized egg. I'll take it. I'll take it.

[C]

No, we haven't taken that fertilize egg yet. Although I have tried to convince my dad and my brother just. I don't know if it would be good, but we could make the horrific the world's biggest balut.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. John mentioned that having had balut, it actually, it tastes good, but it would be horrifying at that scale.

[D]

Yeah, it's a lot to take in.

[E]

I feel like that would be really juicy too.

[A]

Already juicy.

[C]

Would it be better at that scale?

[A]

I don't know. They're brothy. The creepy thing about them is that as the bird starts to grow, it makes like a weird calcified like nugget that you have to like, you know, like almost like eggshell, like nugget inside the thing that you have to kind of remove and you're like, I don't understand any of this. Creepy.

[E]

My first baluta I had was in Laos and it had feathers on it. I Think it was always, oh, little.

[A]

Little like you can eat them.

[E]

But see, I had to pick some of these out.

[D]

They were pretty. Can't they be like, prepared in different sort of like, stages? Like, mine felt more like a hard boiled egg.

[A]

Oh, really?

[D]

Yeah, it was pretty done. I don't know how else to put

[A]

it, but I mean, you know what I mean?

[C]

I think it's. There's like. There's like. I don't think it's called balut if it's fertilized, but like, very early. I've heard that called something else, but I forget the term.

[A]

Yeah, no one wants an in betweener. No one wants an in betweener telling you. I mean, you got to be like on time with that too, right? Because an egg, a chicken egg is what, 20 days, 19 days, something like that? 21 days in that range. Right. So if you don't have a long time, you'd be like, it's like avocados. You keep your fertilized eggs in the incubator on your counter until the exact

[D]

day of the moment.

[A]

Yeah, you don't wanna mess that up. Then you have chickens running around your kitchen. Not okay.

[D]

Not okay.

[A]

Not okay. Oh, my God. I once. And I'm not gonna get into it. Not gonna get into it. Cause we're gonna get hate mail. But I once contacted a hatchery about kind of this stuff, and the lady was horrified. And I was like, you sell birds that people raise to kill. She's like, not when they're. Not when they're babies. That's horrifying. I'm like, what? It's like. It's not horrifying to kill them after six weeks, but it is horrifying to kill them right away. What? What? Like the weird stories people tell themselves about what's right and wrong when they're literally selling animals to be mass murdered and they're, like, telling me that I'm Dr. Mengele. You know what I mean? I'm like, that's not. You know what I mean? Like, you're.

[D]

Yep.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Yep.

[A]

Yeah. Or like the time when I euthanized frogs for an art piece and I got them from a place where literally anyone else was ordering frogs. They would. So if you. It used to be. I don't know, I haven't bought frogs in years and years, but it used to be that you would go to the markets where they would have the frogs and they would be a literal, like, tough boy trash can full of live frogs. Like layers, layers, layers and layers of frogs and you would order one, they would reach in with their hand, like three finger grip, boom. The back legs pull the frog out directly on the chopping block, chop the legs off and then scrape with the cleaver the still alive body into a trash, trash can. So that is what is actually happening, you know what I mean? And so then people gave me guff because I was being like, no, please don't, please don't. And then like taking the frog, chloroforming them, spiking the brain, euthanizing them, and then using the muscles for an art piece. It was a long time ago. And yeah, I was like, you guys are all hypocrites, you know what I mean? You're all terrible people. Hypocrites. You know what I mean? People.

[D]

What else is new?

[A]

That's true. That's true. So what do you guys. What else? What else? What'd you do with the emua? You didn't tell me yet. Sorry.

[C]

Yeah, we did a Spanish tortilla. So we did fingerling potatoes and just some lightly caramelized onions. We had enough for two, like, you know, decent sized. I don't know how big the pan is. Somewhere between like 8 and 10 inch pan. We did like one omelette that was a bit more shallow, a bit more cooked through for the people that liked that more. And then we did a second one that was a bit, you know, creamy on the inside.

[A]

And what are you, what are you, Are you a, are you a set man or a creamy man?

[C]

You know? You know, I'm a creamy man.

[A]

Nastasia literally was in the back here going creamy like that. Oh my God. Hey, listen, let me ask you a question about the Spanish. Not that you would know this, but don't you kind of think the Spanish at this point should be like. Yeah, I know we had the language first, but like really a tortilla is a tortilla and not this thing, you know what I mean?

[C]

I did think you would be really delicious. Next time we do Spanish tortillas, I'm putting it in a tortilla. I think that would be a great.

[A]

That's called, it's called a breakfast burrito, you know what I mean?

[C]

Like literally a wedge of Spanish tortilla with a little sauce of some sort. You know, tortilla like that.

[A]

Yeah, they have this place called Austin and this is what they do there, you know what I mean? Anyway, that sounds good. So again, I'll ask you the same question I asked you every time you've emu'd. Does it have any appreciable difference in taste between making it with that or making it with a chicken egg? Or is it just fewer but more difficult things to crack?

[C]

Again, I actually think. Again, I think the emu egg flavor is a bit milder, so it actually helps the potato and onion stand out more. But again, it is a very viscous texture. So when you get that set outside and softer inside, it's a nice texture.

[A]

But what do you mean by milder? Less sulfurous? Less eggy?

[C]

Yeah, it's less eggy.

[A]

Have you ever over overcooked it to see whether it goes green the same way, whether it has the same sort of, like, overcooked. I think maybe for science, you gotta do, like, a viciously overcooked emu egg. Boil that sucker for, like, I don't know how.

[E]

Too long?

[A]

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, remember that every time you double the distance, you multiply by four the cooking time. So you need to measure your egg diameter. And then, you know, assume it's a sphere. Right. Which it's not. And then multiply, like, whatever that dimension is, then multiply the cooking time that you would by four. Right. Whatever the percentage is.

[C]

Would I be able to overcook a, like, ramekin of mixed egg, or does it have to be strangely.

[A]

I don't think you can, because I know for a fact, I mean, you could. I don't know if it's gonna give you the same information. I separated yolks and whites cooked differently, and cracked eggs sometimes cooked differently from eggs that are cooked in their shell. I don't know why, but, you know, I've had that happen because, remember in the 90s, sorry, 2000s, early 2000s, like, chefs would do that all the time. They would break the yolks and the whites and cook them up separately. And once they've been broken, maybe if they're whole, it would work. But once they've been broken, they don't cook the same way anymore. Not the same temperatures. Like, nothing's the same.

[E]

The AEA suggests that they need to be cooked for 60 to 90 minutes.

[A]

What is the AEA?

[E]

The American EMU Association.

[A]

Are they also now. Are you.

[E]

They have a recipe for deviled egg up here.

[A]

Oh, my God. Like a single egg. Deviled egg with a giant piping bag. Here's the problem is the ratio is just not right. No one wants that much white in their deviled egg.

[D]

Yeah, no.

[A]

You know what I mean? No, no.

[D]

Doesn't work.

[A]

I mean, it's a good stunt. You know, there used to be the medieval stunt before they could get these things of, like, making, like, a fake egg and just, like, putting stuff in and cooking them, like, in, like, sacks, like pig bladders and whatnot. Like making the double egg situation. All the. A lot of the. Like. Well, they're not really medieval. Most of them are early Renaissance, but they're all stunts anyway. What'd you say, Gwen?

[C]

If you had a big enough egg like that, you could. You'd have to, like, cut it up. And then you could get, like, a choice slice with a. With the right amount of white from the middle.

[A]

Oh, no. Like a watermelon slice of devil of. No, I don't know. Like, just the idea of biting into a white that is any larger than a chicken. Egg white is like. No, I don't need it to be any larger than a chicken. Maybe duck, but no larger. That's the most white that I want in poisoning my yolk. I do like sieved whites, actually. Like, sieved whites and yolks together on a toast with the caviar.

[D]

Yeah, I'm fine with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that works.

[A]

Anyway, whatever. All right, so are you gonna continue in your emutastrophe? Are you. Are you gonna, like, become, like, an emu farmer now? Is that what they're doing in Vancouver island, emu farming?

[C]

I mean, we are not going to. But, you know, we'll get. You know, we'll get an egg or two every so often and play around.

[A]

Yeah, you need to start eating cassowaries. The most vicious of all birds, the killer birds. They're the birds that have the super sharp, like, back claw that, like, can cut through car doors. And apparently every once in a while, someone's like, oh, cassowary. And then the cassowary murders them every once in a while anyway. Like, you know, ostriches are big and dangerous, but no one's ever like, I feel like I'm gonna get murdered.

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

No, but, like, cassowary, even though it's much smaller, mess you up. Mess you up anyway. Flightless birds. All right, so I'm not even gonna do anything. I did this. John, do you got anything for the week we can review?

[E]

Not really. I mean, made some beans, did some braised lamb.

[A]

Rancho Gordo. Yes. Okay, which ones? Tarbet, let me ask you a question. Do you think that he has ever discounted a bag of beans?

[E]

I know he has never discounted.

[A]

Oh, my God, that was the hardest score on the radio. We're like, hey, would you ever give the cooking issues people a discount. He's like, I've never. He doesn't talk like that. I've never discounted a bag of beans in my life, and I never will. I'm like, whoa, dude.

[D]

I respect that, though.

[A]

I did. And it wasn't like, respect the beat. I wasn't like, f you. I was like, okay, fair enough.

[D]

Right? Yeah.

[A]

All right. Will you discount one of your chamba things that you're. Ah, maybe. Yeah, maybe. They're highly valued by everyone. So, yes, I can discount them anyway. Hey, you know who's got a book coming out again is George Moats. His book is coming out, like, again right now. Bunch of new pages. Gotta get him back in to hamburger this place up. Yeah, yeah.

[D]

Another. Is it a re edition of the same book or.

[A]

It is, but it's like, extra stuff in the way that, like, Liquid Intelligence, should that ever happen, has a bunch of, like, extra stuff.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

You know what I mean?

[D]

Cool.

[A]

Should that ever happen. It's gonna be too big for Nastasia. It won't be useful for her anymore. She's gonna have to keep the old one because, you know, if it's too thick, it will squish the food underneath that. She's trying to keep one hot and one cold. You know what I mean? I'm gonna make a Styrofoam edition just for you, Stas. It's just like, imagine, they will never do this, but imagine if they did an audiobook of it. And then I could just give her an SD card in Styrofoam, so it'd be super light and even better at keeping her MCDLT of Life separated. You know what I mean? McDlt, for those of you that don't know what that is. McDonald's had this brilliant idea in the 80s, I guess, but where they're like, the main problem with hamburgers is that the lettuce and tomato wilt. That's the main problem in all of life.

[D]

That's always what I'm saying.

[A]

So they had. Literally, the quote was, we keep the hot side hot and the cool side cool. And so you had this double Styro clamshell where the meat was on one side, steaming up that side of the Styrofoam. And then you had the shredded lettuce and tomato and the bun on the other side staying crisp. And then you opened the mcdlt, like, housed it in two bites, and then threw the Styrofoam, and it's still there. You could put the Styrofoam is probably still in the landfill. Oh, yeah, yeah, you can go find that stuff. But, you know, that's. So that's what, you know, Nastasia wants to bring the MCDLT back with the new edition of Liquid Intelligence.

[B]

When does that come out?

[A]

Hey, it's not on me anymore.

[B]

Oh, no. But, but. So when is it?

[A]

Well, I don't have a date because what happened was. What happened was I handed all of the changes and edits in and they were like, oh, we didn't think you meant this much. Oh, wow. And so they're like, trying to figure

[B]

out, like, well, we should plan a bunch of parties, right? No. Okay.

[A]

I am. No, I'm gonna. Like, that's one of the reasons I need to know relatively far in advance is I need to go, like, drum up some liquor company fools. You're not fools, people. But you know what I mean? And, like, do. Do the old. I mean, I didn't do that the first time around because. Yeah, stupid.

[D]

Because. Stupid.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, but classic. Yeah, it'd be fun because, like, those parties are actually like book launch parties for cocktail. Books can be fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes they're not.

[D]

A lot of times they're not, but

[A]

they can be fun.

[B]

We know how to make a good party or a weird party.

[D]

That's true.

[A]

Yeah, Weird. Hey, so, yeah, we said this. We've covered in some other. This one. But like, yeah, anytime Nastasia and I have a stupid idea and we're gonna be together, Nastasia's like, no, we're gonna do that dumb idea. And then we're sitting there doing it, and then people are like, why are you doing this? And we're like, I don't know.

[B]

But yeah, it's art. Somebody was like, it's art.

[A]

Yeah. Nastas once got berated. Recently, it was berated by a friend of ours for. For doing these things and. And was like, nastasia, why the hell are you doing any of this stuff? And Stasi's like, what? I don't understand the question. What do you mean? Like, like, this is what we do. We don't know why we do it.

[D]

Yeah. It's such a burn to tell somebody, like, why do you do the things you do?

[A]

Yeah, why?

[B]

Well, I think because they don't make money, maybe.

[A]

Yeah. Well, I mean, my wife often wants to know what I'm doing because it doesn't make money. You know what I mean? It's a fair point.

[D]

If it doesn't make dollars. It doesn't make sense.

[A]

Oh, is that who came up with that one?

[D]

I'm gonna forget. It's a rap lyric from. Oh man, I should know that. I'll have it by the end of the show.

[A]

All right, so while you guys are thinking of crap, I'll just rip through some questions, shall we?

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

All right. Our good friend Kevin wrote this is a million years ago. So I actually saw him in person when I was in la, but I'll still read it because people might want to know. So with more and more kitchens moving to induction burners, we've been looking into high quality Adonabe pots that are induction compatible. Models we found use something they refer to as induction compatible coating on the outside of the Donabe. Do you have any insight into what this is that makes it compatible? The longevity of the coating and whether it's possible to buy or make this coating or paint it? Kevin, unfortunately, and I know you did the research too, because I spoke to you about it, this is all hokum. Here's what they do. They embed an iron plate into the clay. So Donabe is like the clay bowls and it would be amazing to be able to make anything like that induction compatible. But. And you would think that they could make some sort of like super iron rich clay that would work or like maybe a glaze that was thick enough, that was like had enough conductivity and iron in it that you could get it to work. But alas, no. They just embed an iron slug into the clay and they choose an alloy and a clay body that have roughly the same rate of expansion so that it doesn't shatter itself as it opens and how durable it is. Excellent question. Have no idea. But yeah, like would I trust one with an iron slug in it over an open flame? No, probably not anymore. You know what I mean? Whereas like low fire pots, usually you can put them directly on a flame. That's the awesome thing about a lowfire pot. But yeah, so that's unfortunate. I really wish, and I've said this a million times, but I'll say it one more time in case someone's about to make the mistake. Don't buy one of those induction rings that allow you to put a non induction friendly pot onto an induction burner. The reason you shouldn't buy them is they don't work. That's the reason you shouldn't buy them because what happens is that that thing will get real hot. But then there's like a very big. There's a very big Temperature jump between that slug. There's a big thermal barrier between that and your pan. So unless you had like, if you went to a metal shop and had someone like compress and heat and sinter that slug onto the bottom of your pan, then it would work fine, you know what I mean? But you can't. And they don't. And so what happens is that slug viciously overheats. Viciously overheats. And it'll probably. It could mess up your induction. It definitely is going to be a lot hotter. It's going to start stinking like burning electronics. I've had real bad luck with them. I'm sure you guys have had bad luck with them.

[D]

Never done it.

[A]

There's someone out there is going to try to buy one and they're going to be like, why doesn't this work? And the reason is because it can't. And I've tried actually also to throw one of those slugs into a clay pot and cook by having the iron slug in the liquid on inside of the clay pot. That couldn't get it to work because it was too far. The iron was too far away from the induction to have it effectively couple with my control freak. Anyway, someone could solve this problem, but they probably won't. Not enough money. Not enough money for someone to solve it. Lionel Hutz. I had a very interesting and delicious pizza the other day from a place called truly pizza in SoCal. You guys been to Truly Pizza?

[B]

Nope.

[A]

No. I mean, Southern California is a big place.

[D]

Yeah. That could mean anything.

[A]

California's a long state.

[D]

It is.

[A]

Is there any state longer than California?

[D]

I don't think so.

[A]

Long.

[D]

Could Texas deceptively be long? I don't think so. I think California's still.

[A]

I mean, Alaska's wide and tall. Alaska's freaking huge.

[D]

Pretty big state.

[A]

Big state.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Anyway, the pizza had tons of micro blisters on the crust that provided a textural component to the pie that made it really satisfying, fun to eat. How do they achieve a crust like this? What causes the blistering? Baked doughs. And how could someone control the size and the amount of blisters? That's the last point. I don't know how to control the size and the amount. However, classically the way to do that is a cold ferment. A cold, long ferment in a fridge, like retarding the dough. What I don't know, honestly, is because I was thinking about this is whether. Cause people have different explanations for why the blistering happens. I've heard well, because it's colder in the fridge, CO2 is more, you know, is more soluble in the dough. So the CO2 stays in the dough, and then when you heat it, it makes little blisters as it inflates. That's what I've heard. But I'm trying to remember, if you take a cold fermented dough and then fully temp it up to room temperature before you fire it, I think you still get some blisters, in which case it's not. Unless it is true that you can have supersaturated dough for hours or supersaturated liquid for hours and hours and hours. I mean, champagne doesn't go fully flat instantly. You know what I mean? So that could still be the reason. But. But I don't know. It would be interesting to see if you let it sit out for a long time or like, par. Heat it a little bit. But anyway, that's the explanation I've heard. I don't know whether it's true or false. Who knows? All right. I remember back during the transition from contra to bar Contra, you mentioned the transition. You mentioned that you were testing to see if you could put my money where my mouth is and use the BDX cocktail cube for shaking drinks. Whatever came of this. Well, we do. Yeah, that's what we do. Every shaken drink that we make, we. We use trash can ice and a cocktail cube, and it works great. But the problem is, as Nastasia and I know all too well, you can't make money trying to get a factory who doesn't care about you to sell you something for too much money and then try to sell it at a reasonable price to someone in the United States at. Let me tell you this. If 1,000 people wanted them and you made $3 a cube, at the end of the day, you've made $3,000.

[B]

Is that worth it?

[D]

That's not capitalism.

[A]

No, that's not how that works. This isn't like, yeah, Monopoly era, where you're like, $3,000, I'm going to buy my cigar factory. You know what I mean? It's not how it works. You know what I mean? It's just not worth it. We would need to sell. Even if you sold 100,000 of them, right then you've made $300,000 now out of that Nastasia. And I got to get. We got to get paid. We got to pay insurance, we got to do marketing. We got to. We got all this stuff. So, like, you know, unless you're making huge, if you're doing something inexpensive, you need to sell skads of them. You know what I mean? And then you got to get multiple skus, right? So you got to be like, well, what else can we use this for? And Nastasia always gets mad at me because I'm not willing to say it's useful for something that it's not useful for. And I'll be like, you know what? It's the world's greatest paperweight. You know what? If you're a little bit of a prickly person like me, maybe it could be your best friend. You know what I mean?

[D]

It's a design object.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's ouje obj. Mm. Objet. Duh. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I had that in me, because then, you know, maybe Nastasia and I could have made some money. You know what I mean?

[B]

We still can

[A]

sing. All right.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

What do you think the asterisks after nibble means? It's from nibble asterisks. What do you think the asterisk means? Like, it's not.

[C]

That's. I put there because we've discussed this before, but it's marked to readdress.

[D]

Uh huh.

[A]

Oh, why. Why did I want. This is about my hood, which still works great, by the way. Here's the one problem. If you're like me and you have a difficult time because I was Talking to Harold McGee about this, Harold McGee is also getting a hood, putting a hood into his apartment. I still love my new hood. If you're like me and you have problems. So it's not just low light situations that I'm not good with. And I think maybe a lot of older people have this problem. It's also like, if there's a lot of light in one place and not enough contrast in another, I can't see, so I can't. There's a dot. So it has these, like. Remember on old school stereo equipment, there'd be like a big silver knob with knurling on it and a small indented dot. Yeah, Yeah. I can't see that indented dot anymore because when the hood lights are on, like, all I see is, like a massive light coming at me and I can't see the dot anymore. So I have no idea which way to turn the knobs. So I'm gonna get, like, some nail polish.

[D]

I was gonna say it's a pretty easy fix.

[A]

Yeah, I haven't done it yet, but, like, that's the main thing. And you know how, like, remember my New Year's resolution? I Don't know if you remember. This is like more small.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. What's it called?

[A]

Well, death by a thousand cuts. Like more small irritations. Like, I just need more small irritants in my life. So I feel like not only do I not deserve to know which direction to turn that knob, but I feel like it would actually make my life too much better to know what was gonna happen, you know what I mean?

[D]

So you gotta keep it the way it is.

[A]

Keep it the way it is.

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I gotta walk up to you.

[D]

I got a fire under you.

[A]

Yeah. The best part about it is, and this is like, me, me, me, me, right? Is that I have two motors with two independent switches. So I don't know which one I've turned. Like, I can't tell which one's off and on necessarily because it's the same noise. Cause it's going through this. I'm like, oh, my problems are so hard.

[D]

But you need that little bit of stress every time.

[A]

Little bit of stress. Keep it there, keep it there, keep it there. Because I don't want to have to go to the bqe because then if I have to, if to increase my stress level, I have to get the car and go to the BQE. Now I gotta pay that $15 or whatever to come back to downtown, you know what I mean? Did you enjoy that driving through?

[D]

No, no, no.

[B]

It's worse than LA traffic.

[A]

Oh, give me up.

[D]

Well, there's just more mysteries now with all the congestion. I don't. You know, I'm.

[A]

It is not worse in la.

[B]

It feels worse. It feels.

[A]

Because nobody needs to drive here. You can just get on a subway.

[D]

Well, that's fair. That's fair. There is nothing stopping me from getting on the Long Island Railroad.

[A]

Yeah, other than your hatred of the Long Island Railroad.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

No, that whole getting in and out of Long island thing is a freaking nightmare.

[D]

Oh, yeah. Terrible apocalypse place to live. Truly.

[A]

So for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, we have this question. The question we ask anyone when we first meet them, one of the first questions we ask them is, so you moved to New York, so what are your plans for the apocalypse? How are you going to get out? And so everyone has their different. I can't. So here's the question. I'm not allowed to choose something that doesn't allow me to also rescue my family. Right.

[D]

Makes it harder.

[A]

Makes it much harder. Right. Because like, what you want is just one of those parachutes. With the. With the propeller on the back.

[D]

Yep.

[A]

You just go up to the roof of your building.

[D]

Gone.

[A]

Gone. Over any river, climb every. Gone. You know what I mean? Yeah. Not my family. Because, you know, Booker would never put one of those things on his back and go. Not ever. You know what I mean? I would have to knock him out, like Mr. T, strap him to my chest. And he's tall. I wouldn't be able to see over him. You know what I mean? He's light, but he's tall.

[B]

But now you only have three people, two people to take with.

[A]

Yeah, but Dax would not have been a problem. Dax would want to scrap the thing on. He'd be looking for the apocalypse. The other good one. Zodiac boat. Zodiac boat. In fact, we've talked about this before. There is a company where super rich people who send their kids to live in New York and are worried about it can rent a Zodiac boat, and it's yours. And someone sits there and maintains it, makes sure the battery is working, make sure it's gassed up, make sure it's got a radio. Make sure it's got.

[B]

You said you were gonna hotwire, like, any boat in the East River?

[A]

Yeah, for sure.

[D]

Oh, that's a good call.

[A]

Yeah. Hotwire a boat.

[D]

That's a great call.

[A]

Yeah, but, like, other people who are better at hot wiring get there first. You know what I mean? So, yeah, so, like, this company, I don't know if it's still there.

[D]

There are more boats than. There are people good at hot wiring.

[A]

Yeah, you think so?

[D]

Or more boats than. There are people better at hot wiring than you.

[A]

But there's no. Yeah, but there's no boats right by my house. I'd have.

[B]

Do you know how to hotwire a boat, Dave?

[A]

I mean, boats aren't designed to not steal. I mean, they're not like cars. You know what I mean?

[D]

Like, it's there for the taking.

[A]

I mean, you know what I mean? Anyway, and, like, my point is that, like, you could get a rig like an Intex with, like, an Intex. Small Intex, not a real Zodiac, but a small Intex with an outboard. You could fit that in your house, probably in your apartment, run down to the water and be out, but it wouldn't be a fast enough boat. You really want, like, with these guys, because they got, like, you know, a 200, 300 horsepower motor, and they're out of here. Because how long do you have before the apocalypse sets in?

[D]

That's. I don't know.

[A]

Who can say When I Was a kid. It was a 15 minute problem. You had 15 minutes from the time they pushed, they cooked.

[D]

If you're in New York, that's it.

[A]

From the time they push the button. You got like 20 minutes or so before the missiles hit. But you know, they know only after a couple of minutes. Takes them a minute to figure out the trajectories and stuff. So really maximum. If you were on the phone with the President, getting the Note, you'd have 15 minutes.

[D]

15 minutes.

[A]

So unless you have a helicopter, you're toast.

[D]

No, the move is to pick a good album, then put it on and have a cocktail.

[A]

This is why I never thought I would live in New York City when I was a kid. Because I assumed we would get nuked off the planet. Maybe it'll happen.

[B]

Still time.

[D]

Hey, there is still time.

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

This service is still a thing, by the way.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. How much does it cost?

[E]

It's not saying, but plan B, marine.com. this is insane. Different types of boats, different sizes.

[A]

P.S. people, they're not paying us.

[D]

Here's the Today's show is brought to you by.

[A]

Brought to you by. Plan B.

[D]

If you can't steal a boat, go Plan B.

[A]

If you really need to gtf gtfo, go to plan B. Boats on cooking issues. But here's the messed up thing about it. Cause I actually looked at it. Right? Cause why wouldn't I? It's the Internet.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

You're not allowed to go use the

[B]

boat, like for fun.

[E]

Yeah, well, it has to be ready for the emergency.

[A]

Yeah, but if you're on the boat, then you can go. That's the thing that's so stupid. It's like if I'm paying all this money for a boat. That's why it's a scam. Because like, if they. If it was really my boat that was there for me in case of emergency, then why can't I just use it whenever I want? You're paying all this money.

[D]

The apocalypse comes. You call them. They're like. It actually doesn't qualify as emergency here. Apocalypse is not listed on.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, Con Ed caused this one. So your insurance won't pay.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[A]

By the way, people, that literally happened to us at Booker and Dax when Sandy hit. All of the downtown businesses, all of our insurances, none of them would pay. None of our business interruption insurances would pay us for the time we were down in Sandy. Because it was a human being at Con Ed who didn't flip the switch or they turned it off. There was something that someone at Con Ed did where the insurance was like, go sue Con Ed if you. And we're like, you suck.

[D]

What a world.

[A]

Yeah, what a world. What a world. That's funny. But, you know, I heard a very funny story about a CEO showing off a server building and, you know, where they keep all the servers and I, you know, it stuff. And he was showing off on a big tour and there's a huge red button. You think that like classic. He hits the freaking red button, the whole system goes down.

[D]

That's like, that's Homer Simpson moment right there, if there ever was one.

[A]

I basically am Homer Simpson, I think. You know, I even live near a donut store. I live near donut plant. I live right there. You know what I mean? Anyway, all right, Carver M writes in. I am curious. This is a question I can actually answer. I'm curious about the properties of ultrasperse and how it differs exactly from general corn starch or starches in general and. Or any benefits or detriments to using it instead of cornstarch. Well, Carver M. Ultrasperse, there's. What's the other one? There's ultra. You want spurs. There's also ultra Tex.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, Ultra Tex.

[A]

Yeah. So the two. Here's both Tex and spurce are what's called pre gelatinized starch. And so they're like wondrous flour, right? Which is pre gelatinized flour. And what that means is unlike regular flour, which even though it. You think it's soluble, parts of it are soluble. The proteins will actually kind of like bind with the water, but the starch itself doesn't. That's why if you take cornstarch and put it into water, it like settles down to the bottom over time because it's not really soluble, only the broken and damaged pieces. And you know, it's a suspension otherwise. Right. So what ultrasperse and ultratex are, are pre gelatinized. And so what that means is they. You can, you don't have to heat them again. You can heat them, but you don't have to. So if you're not going to cook it later and you just want to add some thickening, you use ultra sparse or text. The reason you want sparse is because of the word spurs in there. It's for dispersability, right? So it's what's called a pre agglomerated starch. So if you look at Tex, it like looks like powder, whereas if you look at spurs, it looks like almost like grainy, like Nutritional, yeasty like stuff and so it won't clump as badly. So if you need to throw something in, they use that. Or you can use Wonder is another good one. Potato flakes are also like pre gelatinized. The problem with potato flakes, potato starch in general, is that if you then beat it or whip it too much, it kind of can lose its texture. And if you overcook it, it kind of loses texture. But still, like, I've thickened things with potato flakes.

[D]

Cool.

[A]

You know, because they're not as easy to get as they used to be. At least not my neighborhood without flavor. Because they all come like pre buttered.

[D]

Pre buttered, yeah.

[A]

You know what I've never cooked with. I was considering doing it because I have so much of it at home. So like Booker and Dax. Dax, he doesn't live at home anymore, but like they call him Popcorn Dax because he makes so much popcorn. Booker used to make a lot of popcorn. So I store in my house. I have like, you know, in case there's another situation where like the market shut down, I have a bunch of flavacol and I have a bunch of like butter flavored coconut popcorn oil. You know what I mean?

[D]

It's important.

[A]

Yeah, but I've never just cooked with the popcorn oil. You think it'd be good? Like, what else would you want cooked with movie flavor?

[D]

This is a great question.

[A]

Like, would you want a pancake cooked in that instead of butter?

[D]

That could work.

[A]

Yeah. Or like what else would be.

[D]

I was thinking not biscuit. I don't think so, man. That's, that's.

[A]

They have the solids which I have used by now, have the liquid one. We have a lot of it. I need to go through it. I can't just keep it there forever. Doesn't last forever.

[D]

What would that taste like on a, like a steak or something? Probably terrible.

[A]

Cook the steak in movie theater oil.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Put it on corn on the cob. Yeah. You know what? I'm going to do it next time I do burgers. I'm going to do corn chowder burgers and yeah, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do.

[D]

I'm going to do popcorn burgers. Of course.

[A]

Yeah. Popcorn burger.

[D]

Call up, call it Moats.

[A]

I'm sure somebody in Mississippi already does it. Like he just did the Mississippi Slug Burger and I missed it. So anyway, anyway. All right. Wenrich writes in. Just got back from Oaxaca, did a market tour where the guide asked, any dietary restrictions? I answered no. But then the Tour guide gave us a whole bunch of empanadas full of brains after I had eaten them is when they were told. Granted I did not declare any dietary restrictions, but this happened to me, too, where you don't expect someone's gonna serve you brains. You just don't expect it anymore.

[D]

No.

[A]

And the question is, with prions and bovine spongiform encephalopathy and all the different forms of encephalopathy that you can get, should we still eat brains? Would you guys eat brains?

[D]

I mean, I have.

[A]

Yeah, you have, but do you.

[D]

I'll order it if it's there.

[A]

Usually you'll order it if it's there.

[D]

Yeah.

[E]

If I see some veal brains on the menu, I'll probably order them.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

They sound better in French servel. Yeah, sure.

[E]

I don't know.

[D]

Sign me up for two of those.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it sounds good.

[D]

I get scarcity mindset. So when I see something on a menu, I'm like, ooh, ooh. I usually can't get that.

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

Really? Yeah, Yeah. I don't. I don't eat those things. They're good. They taste good.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Don't eat. Yeah. Because you just don't know, like the next Jakob Creutchfeld variant that's going to come out that's going to toast you. You just don't know what it is. And so I just stay away from.

[D]

It's fair.

[A]

Stay away from it. You know what I mean? You know, maybe because it's also. I don't love it. It's not like,

[C]

What do you think the risk level is of emu brain?

[A]

I mean, what is that, like a teaspoon? Like, how big is an emu brain? How big of a brain can an emu have?

[C]

I guess I could find out.

[A]

I don't know if you know, this bird brained. Here's another thing. I don't think that they're on the list of smart birds either. Like crows smart. Smart as hell. You know what I mean? Parrots smart. No one's like, you know, that bird is smart as an. That dude. Just smart as an emu.

[D]

Smart as an emu.

[A]

This doesn't come up. You know what I mean? Yeah, they look dumb, you know, I mean.

[D]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I don't know. I mean, like, I think the risk is relatively. I think the. As you go further and further away from human. Well, I know the avian flu can cross. Yeah, Right. So the, you know, I don't know what. But that's, that's an actual Like a virus. I don't know how. I don't know how. The usually the brain problems are prions, which are like, you know, weird protein fragments that can somehow self replicate in your head and cause problem. I don't know whether how transferable they are. So I don't know.

[D]

What are the odds really? Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

[A]

Odds are incredibly low anyway.

[D]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Although like every culture who has a habit of. Of ritually consuming brains from people ends up getting pretty gnarly.

[D]

Well, okay. People.

[A]

I mean, Yeah, I mean, but it's a thing. I mean like, not like, you know, has been a thing over the history of humanity. It has been a thing and it has caused medical issues. You know what I mean? Don't eat. Don't eat. Don't eat at a brains. Why are you considering buying all of this farmer's emu brains? You have them saving them in the freezer for you so that you can have like, like a pate to emu brain again.

[C]

Eventually we're gonna get access to emu meat, so.

[A]

But we have access to all kinds of meat. But no one's like handing me the brain. The only time, usually the only time that it's actually a problem for me is when we get the couplet cell where you get the lamb's head. And then you're like, okay, I have to now because you split the lamb's head in half. I have to eat it because it's part of the whole face.

[D]

I guess that's the last time in China. I must have had rabbit. Like the whole rabbit head.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Yeah, I guess I've had that brain.

[A]

Yeah. So like, I'm not gonna be a jerk.

[D]

I'm fine still, I think.

[A]

Well, that's the thing. You don't know till later.

[D]

I don't know.

[E]

Yeah, real quick. Tyman in the discord said he going back to the butter stuff. He made a very successful Papa John style garlic dipping sauce.

[D]

Oh yeah, that checks.

[A]

You know what? Booker freaking loves Papa John's.

[C]

Oh yeah. Make a mayo. Just make a mayo with the butter oil.

[A]

A butter mayo.

[C]

Fake butter oil.

[A]

I could try. I have enough of it. The thing is like, I'm just trying to imagine convincing people at my house to eat it. You know what I mean? Probably be good on french fries though.

[D]

Sounds like the kind of themed dinner party you Nastasia should do.

[A]

Only popcorn oil.

[D]

I can't believe it's only butter flavicol.

[A]

Yeah. Can't believe it's flavor. Carl spray. Remember, like When Fabio used to do the I can't believe it's not Butters. Yeah, yeah, dude. Guy has no sense of humor about getting hit in the face with a bird. None. None. He's like, it's dangerous for the bird. And for me I'm like, suck it. Suck it, Fabio. Okay. Oh, Owen K. Owen K. Had a question about a wd50 recipe for like, you know, Twizzler related things out of. But you know what, I'm just gonna wait until Wiley responds. I'm gonna text Wiley the answer about the question in his cookbook and then he can get back to me. He's in Vegas right now doing some sort of Wiley related thing probably about that TV show that he's on, which I don't have, Paramount Plus. So like, I gotta go steal someone's Paramount plus so I can go watch Wiley on the tv.

[D]

Too many services.

[A]

And then someone was like, can't you just turn on CBS? I'm like, I don't get broadcast TV.

[D]

Who does that anymore?

[A]

I mean, do TVs even. Can you.

[B]

I do.

[A]

Do you have an antenna on your tv?

[B]

Yeah, I have that old TV in my.

[D]

Oh yeah, little black and white tv. Do they still has the bunny ear antennas, right? Yeah.

[A]

Do they. I mean, maybe in la. Do they still literally broadcast TV here?

[D]

Yeah, I think they have to.

[A]

Yeah. Really?

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

So I could like put up an antenna and watch TV

[D]

like channels two through nine or something like that, right? Or 13. I don't know what it is, but yeah.

[A]

And that's why we still have an FCC.

[E]

Yeah, that's what it was.

[D]

13.

[A]

Okay, noted. Anyway, Owen, I'll get that to you as soon as he responds. Michael L. My second ANOVA oven version one has failed and it's out of warranty. Yeah, it's out of warranty. I'll say it's out of warranty. What do you recommend as a replacement? Sous vide is not a requirement. I can use my juul for that. Combi Moisture management would be nice. 9 times out of 10 I'm just making pizza, roasting veg, and using it as I would a typical oven. I actually don't love it for a pizza because it can't get that hot. Right. It's like I use it constantly as a keep warm. So for me, the magic of that is reheating and keeping crap warm and at the right moisture level. So there is no inexpensive sub $4,000 or sub $3,000 replacement for that. My mom said she's going to. I mean I don't have the money or the electricity for it. But she might actually get the gag now, in which case I can test it at and see whether or not the gaggenau combi is all it's cracked up to be for those of you out there who have that kind of cash to spend. But I have not found a small, inexpensive thing that can do any of that. If you're not. If you're just going to use it like, like an oven, then if it's big enough for you, it'll do. Pizza Breville makes a decent pizza standalone. Wiley actually likes it. The issue with Breville's pizzaiolo oven is that you make one, then wait, then make the next, then wait, then make the next because it's plugged into a wall socket and so even though it's very shallow, there's a limited amount of energy it can suck out of the wall. So you have to let it recover its thermal energy before you do the next and next and next. Or just get three of them, plug them into three sockets and, you know, round robin, those stuff. But, you know, I. My Batteried cuisine is. I have my real oven, you know, but then mostly during the summer, I'm using a Breville smart oven, the biggest one they make, which can do a whole chicken and it can do, you know, pizza, it can do bread. If you get the. If you get the cast irons that aren't too big, where the handle's not too big, they make cast irons for this purpose that don't have a lot of like frippery and handles and crap sticking off of them. Those will fit into the Breville nicely. So you can do good bread in it. They work. They work fine. They're not that expensive, they're fairly robust. That's what I use, that and the Anova. But I would not give up my anova. I bought another one used off the Internet just so that I could keep that keep warm function. Because I love love, love lrrv that keep more function math man. I want to get more into making fluid gels to use in cooking and baking. I'm interested in making a coffee fluid gel and would love to hear what kind of desserts might benefit from one. Would chocolate cookies half dipped in coffee fluid gel be interesting? I think you want a gel for that, not a fluid gel, Right. So like the trick used to be you would do a gel and gel and it would snap set and then you could put that on the outside of something, but it's going to make your cookie soft, you know what I mean? So to me a fluid gel is more like it's like for plating. You're like shabloying bam. And you can make like a line and then it looks like a gel but when you put it in your mouth it eats like a fluid. So another suggestion or question. Could you put it as a cookie filling? Sure, you know what I mean? It's a little liquidy. Its main thing is to look solid but then disappear in your mouth. That's its main shtick. So any, you know like they're really good at making heat things that like are heat proof. So like heat proofing, heat proofing. Like you can add a fluid gel to a whipped cream and they become intensely stable. That's what I use at home in desserts. What I use them mainly for is non gelatin stabilization of whipped creams. And you can also acidify a fluid gel, add it to whipped cream, the cream won't break and it will just sit there forever. I mean like I did a test of stabilized whipped cream with a fluid gel and I just, I did it in my whipper, my EC whipper and I left it there for four days and it like it dehydrated and like everything but it didn't, didn't sink, didn't die. So that's, that's, those are some ideas. See what you want more Azu writes in I have a lot of free time now. Must be nice. I have a lot of free time now as I'm mid career change sabbatical. I live around the corner from two very well regarded bars in San Francisco. I was interested in see if I could start there. Working prep part time, reading liquid intelligence and applying some of the techniques at home has been great. But it'll be cool to learn how to do these at a professional scale. Any advice on getting started to showing up with a resume pre opening still work. I have no professional bartending experience so any advice for not making a fool out of myself or pissing off important people at bars I like drinking at? Well first rule is make friends with these people first. Especially if remember that in something like prep nowadays when everyone is getting paid to do things, they're actually investing money in you by hiring you and training you to do something. And they need this stuff to work so you have to get them to trust you. If you're coming into it and haven't been working in the industry before, you have to kind of get them to trust you. But you could probably get a trail or two on training, but just get friendly with them, you know what I mean? Like, do a day or two of trails. See whether you actually like making the same thing every day. See whether it takes a certain mentality to not just, like, want to do something, but want to, like, be like, oh, I already learned how to do this. Okay, great. Now do it that way every day the same way.

[B]

I also wouldn't work at your favorite bar because then you'll hate it.

[D]

Yep.

[A]

Wow. Good call, Stas.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

I'd also say that just in getting friends with the bartenders and the staff there, even if there isn't an opening at that place where you want to work, they have friends at other places that they regard and might know of openings at where you can get your foot in the door.

[A]

Unless they're like me and have no friends.

[E]

That too.

[A]

Yeah. So, Stas, what level of bar? It had to be a bar you respect, but not a bar you like for you.

[B]

Well, what if they end up hating prep? Then, you know, I would go for something that. Yeah, they don't really care if they screw over the person by leaving.

[D]

And might it maybe be easier to get an entry level job like that somewhere bad or kind of like lower brow? And then at least when you're having a conversation with the better places, you're like, well, I at least have this experience. You know, you're not coming from zero.

[A]

Right. But I think this person wants to

[B]

do liquid intelligence cramp.

[D]

Well, you gotta start somewhere, right? I mean, start somewhere.

[B]

Yeah, maybe start like learning how to make regular cocktails.

[A]

Yeah, but they don't want them. They don't want to be a bartender. They want to do prep. Well, I mean, most bars who like, aren't doing the techniques don't have a lot prep.

[D]

It's fair enough, fair enough, Fair enough.

[A]

Juicing limes.

[D]

Well, that's something.

[A]

I mean, juicing the limes. Juicing the limes. Did we do breaking the law before we were on air or after?

[D]

Yeah, before.

[A]

Oh, so no one knows Juicing the limes.

[D]

That's a good one.

[A]

Yeah, good. Interesting variants of opinion here. Timon writes in. Any ideas for how to pull off popcorn? Pop in place popcorn. I have an idea for a spring themed meal where the first course is a steel wire bonsai tree with sakura scented popcorn blossoms and they want to use heat guns to pop them on. And, well, this sounds like something that Shonda Rhimes would make. You know what I mean? Like some Bridgerton kind of like pre thing, you know? What? I mean, I don't think this is gonna be possible. You know what I mean? I tried to heat gun. I even have a tiny heat gun at my house for like solder reflow work. And I put it on some popcorn this morning after I read this question and.

[D]

Nah, no, no dice.

[A]

No, no. I just don't think it's gonna work. I think, like, it's a nice thought though. What else would explode? I had this idea. What if you put like little firecrackers into candles and everyone's like, that's a terrible idea. That's a horrible idea. Even Nastasi was like, we can't do that. I was like, at the party, can we make candles where we put like little firecrackers and tie them in so we don't know where in the taper they are? So, like, at a certain point, surprise, surprise, your face has been burned off with wax.

[D]

Or just one of them, like a shishito. Where's the hot one?

[A]

Yeah, that'd be great, right? But then I was like, oh, that's

[B]

a terrible idea because we're in a canyon. So if you start a fire.

[A]

Oof. I always forget. I forget California has a different relationship with fire.

[D]

New York, we love fire here.

[A]

I mean, you know, it's just not as big of an issue here, you know what I mean? Like, it's not as triggering here, you know what I mean? All right, desert platypus. I do not have time to go into frozen drinks now, but I'll do it on another session. So it's been good to have the crew in the room. You know, unfortunately, I will never move to la and you guys will never move back.

[D]

So I might come back one day. Who knows?

[A]

Really?

[D]

Yeah, maybe, huh? Who knows?

[A]

When you're sick of all that nice weather.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

All that chill. Relax.

[D]

I want more fire in my life.

[A]

When you don't want to go out, you're so sick of going out for 5pm drinks and you need to wait until 7. You're gonna come to come to the great state of New York.

[D]

I missed the 4:00am Last call.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although, you know what? I think late night drinking here is actually coming back. You know, it was decent points, but it was dead. It was dead for a long time. New York was not a late night town for a while. But I think we're coming back. Who knows? Not for me. Hell with that cooking issues.