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- [00:12]
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. Only people here in the studio today are me and my man Joe Hazen, rocking the panels. How you doing?
- [00:23]
B
Hey, hey, hey.
- [00:23]
A
Good morning. Good to see you. Yeah. By the way, for those of you that don't really understand how geography works, I'm gonna say he's north, but in fact, he's probably just due east of us. We got John in the state of Connecticut. What's up?
- [00:34]
C
What's up? Great.
- [00:35]
B
Yeah. No, not much.
- [00:36]
A
Yeah, People get confused about Connecticut, but Connecticut is fundamentally like an east west thing. When you think you're going north, you're actually going east west. I don't think the average non Connecticut person thinks about this.
- [00:47]
C
Very true.
- [00:48]
A
Yeah. When you go to north Connecticut, it's like, get your banjo ready. You know what I mean? Anyway. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. No offense.
- [00:59]
C
I love Yankees.
- [01:00]
A
Yeah, I love them. I love them, though. I love them. They're my people. But I'm just saying, you. You gotta know what you're gonna get into, you know what I mean? Over there in. Let's go, upper left, we got Quinn on the great island of Vancouver. How you doing?
- [01:13]
B
Hey.
- [01:14]
C
I'm good.
- [01:14]
A
Yeah? Yeah. And down in the maybe soon to be island of SoCal, we have Jackie molecules.
- [01:20]
C
How you doing, yo? Good and good. And sick, but good. But I'm good.
- [01:25]
A
What kind of sick?
- [01:29]
C
Effing cough, man.
- [01:31]
A
Oh, but like, nothing you got from, like, eating poison food. Nothing salacious, just a cough.
- [01:36]
C
No, I probably got it from New York.
- [01:38]
A
Give me a break, dude. Blame everything on New York. Give me a big fat break. Maybe you got it from the small metal tube that you hurled in from, like, New York to California. Maybe it's that little poorly ventilated, like, chunk of aluminum that they hurled through the sky.
- [01:53]
D
I got it after the radio show.
- [01:55]
C
He said I did.
- [01:57]
A
Yeah. How the hell would you know that? How the hell? How the hell.
- [02:01]
C
Well, the timing is. The timing, man.
- [02:03]
A
The timing of what? You're an epidemiologist now. You know the exact timing of every cough that you get. You had it freaking genotyped.
- [02:10]
B
Blaming New York day after radio.
- [02:12]
A
Hey, listen, those of us that live here get to blame it for everything, right? Once you hightail it out of our hell hole, like, you can't say anything about it anymore. Joe, am I right about this absolute. Yeah. And that is no tangent Tuesdays on cooking issues. It's Like, I shouldn't talk crap about Jersey because I haven't lived there since I was like, in elementary school. I spent like eight years. And when I'm 55, that's not enough time anymore to still talk crap about Jersey. But you know what I mean?
- [02:37]
C
You can always talk crap about Jersey. No, Jersey is a fair game for anybody anytime.
- [02:41]
A
Well, for New Yorkers, I mean, like, what would you do if someone from, like, Iowa started ranking on New Jersey? No offense, Iowa. I'm saying I love. I'm not.
- [02:49]
C
Fair enough.
- [02:50]
B
Yeah.
- [02:50]
A
I'm saying it's not that I have anything against Iowa. It's just like, you know, New Jersey is like the little brother to us, so we can pick on it. You know what I mean? Anyway, and then you heard a little bit of her. But in the hills, in no humans land for Internet, in Laurel Canyon, the land of zero service, we have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez.
- [03:12]
D
Joe, why do you give my location? Hey.
- [03:15]
A
Oh, my God. Guess where I live, people. I live in the Lower east side where there's 8 billion people try to come find me. Laurel Canyon is the densest. First of all, like, unless you're an elite athlete, no way someone is gonna go around Laurel Canyon trying to find. And if they do, they're gonna find that weird little house where literally there's a house somewhere in Laurel Canyon. I don't know. I would give you the exact location, people. I just don't remember it. Where to get your groceries inside, you have to go onto a tiny deck that was built in like 1960 out of non pressure treated two by fours.
- [03:51]
D
But what we think it's a landmark here. Okay, but there's the place you're describing. The groceries. Listen.
- [04:01]
A
No, no, they're dumb. To get in that house is gonna fall off the side of that hill, like, seriously any minute. Because I don't care how landmark something is. We had a landmarked. We had a landmarked. What's it called? Synagogue in our neighborhood. And they didn't take care of it. And so you know what happened to it? It burned down. Like, burned to the ground. And it is extremely lucky that nobody died in the same way. You know what needs to be replaced even in a landmark building? Two by fours. Two by fours that are like from the 60s and all eaten and not painted, that are hanging over a precipice where literally anything that they take into that house is gonna fall off of that precipice. And, you know, hopefully there's no one underneath it when it does. That's all I'm saying. When that house slides off the side of the hill and those people take their last surf ever, I hope that they don't surf into anybody else. That's all I'm saying. Anyway, whatever. Speaking of tangents, I saw a couple of things on the way in. Nastasia. This is only for Nastasia. I saw someone right before I got to Rockefeller center that looked like an exact cross between Cuba Gooding Jr. And Forest Whitaker. And I stared at them so long, they gave me the stink eye. You know what I mean? Are you not allowed to stare at people that look like a cross between two famous people? Is that not okay?
- [05:15]
C
I don't know.
- [05:16]
D
Yeah, I don't think that's okay.
- [05:18]
A
It's not okay.
- [05:18]
C
Yeah.
- [05:20]
A
What if, though? What if they're like, I don't know. I feel like it was okay. He did give me the serious stink eye, though. So I had to, like, start looking around in all different directions to try to, like, remove attention from myself. Another one, I was biking down the street as fast as I could, and I thought I saw a kid spraying Silly String. But then I looked over and I clocked that it was maybe the first time because there was an older kid with him teaching him how to convert a shaving cream can into a spray can of foam. And I was like, you know, okay, nice to learn early in the year because Halloween's a long ways away. But I didn't know New York kids learned that. So for anyone, you shouldn't do this, but what you do is you get Barbasol. Has to be Barbasol because it's cheap, right? Barbasol cans have the spray head on. A Barbasol shaving cream can looks like a tunnel, right? It looks like a Quonset hut. It's like a half circle, right? So what you do is you get a pin, a straight pin, you stick it in that half circle, then you take must be a Bic lighter, and you hold it underneath the tunnel until the plastic gets soft, then lick your fingers so you don't get burned, and squeeze the plastic around the pin, let it set, pull it out. That's it. And so I saw a kid learning this thing that, I mean, has probably been taught for as long as they've had Barbasol cans. You used to do this, right, Joe? Absolute. Yeah. And then you would see how good a job you did based on how far it was spraying. And that's what this kid was doing into the bike lane. So even though he almost hit me with shaving cream. I was like, hey, props. You know what I mean? Props. Anyway, one last tangent before we get into your guys. Tangent, Stas. You'll have an answer for this. Now, listen, because you're a poetry graduate now I get it. Language changes. I'm not. Me, me, me, me, me. Fine. I'm not trying to be classist and say language shouldn't change. My question is this less versus fewer. Why is it that everyone's using less even in places where they otherwise are, like bastions of standard American usage, like npr? Why are fewer people using fewer? Right. No one goes the other way. No one uses fewer when they mean less. Like, I really need to get fewer angry about these grammatical changes. No one says that. You know what I'm saying? Why is fewer losing? I don't know, but I see it all the time. It was in Target not long ago. I was like, why do you have a quantity with the word less? Yeah. Yes. Right, Right. Less is a quantifier of degree, not of actual quantities. You know what I mean? So I don't know, Stas, what do you think? I mean, am I just being super fogey here or, like, you know, what are your thoughts on this?
- [08:03]
D
I don't know.
- [08:05]
B
I don't know.
- [08:05]
D
It's the first I've heard of it,
- [08:07]
A
but I've given up on. I've given up on. That makes me nauseous. I no longer make snide comments about nauseous versus nauseated because, like, guess what?
- [08:15]
D
You know, my biggest gripe is, like, people using emojis and, like, just less words in fewer words in general, you know?
- [08:25]
A
Yeah, actually, I know. For those of you, if you really want to tick Nastasia off, do this. First of all, pull out of your inside jacket pocket a Bananagrams game. She will then think you're a cool. Then proceed to play Bananagrams with Naztazia and only make two and three letter words to try to dump your tiles and just wait to see what happens. Wait. Just wait. And if you really want to see a complete poop storm, like, slide a tile on the ground and don't say anything. She'll see. She'll see it, right? I've seen tables flip. I have the same tables.
- [09:02]
D
Dave, you've never. You've never used LOL in text.
- [09:06]
B
To me.
- [09:08]
A
It's because. It's because I'm never laughing out loud. I'm not a liar text.
- [09:14]
D
Sometimes you are, I imagine.
- [09:16]
A
I mean, I mean, occasionally. Occasionally. Occasionally, yeah. Like, occasionally someone will send me Something that's so off kilter that I actually, like, laugh out loud most of the time. When I'm laughing out loud, though, it's when I'm in person with somebody. It's when I'm in person with somebody that I'm laughing out loud. I don't say it.
- [09:33]
D
Did you ever say it in text?
- [09:35]
A
I will sometimes say it in person to just be like a moron.
- [09:39]
B
Lol.
- [09:39]
A
Like that. But everyone does that, right? I think, like, what if you want to be a total idiot?
- [09:47]
B
That's pronounced.
- [09:48]
A
Yeah, it is. It's not pronounced. What do you. Here's Jack. Here's Jack. I say lol. Lol. No, because you got to make fun of it. The whole point. You know what I'm saying? You got to make fun of it. That's why you got to pronounce it that way. Right. Notice I don't say lol. Lol. Like that. Anyways, Great.
- [10:11]
C
I love it.
- [10:11]
A
Let's get. Let's get to the weekend review on food. Let's start with Quinn Quinza. Quinn, what's the world of emu eggs doing? Brought to you by the Emu Council of America. It's emu egg time on cooking issues. What do you got?
- [10:26]
B
Well, we'll need an Emu Council of North America because I'm up here.
- [10:31]
A
Oh, you're one of those. You're one of those.
- [10:32]
B
You gave me emu eggs this week.
- [10:35]
A
No, no emu eggs. First you give me the Canada's America 2, and then you say you have no emu eggs. You couldn't have led with no emu eggs.
- [10:41]
B
I don't know. Whatever. It has to be left. Gen cup is all over North America, not just America.
- [10:48]
A
Okay. So, you know, you got to get Mexico in on that.
- [10:53]
B
I'm sure they've got emu farms.
- [10:55]
A
I mean, why wouldn't they? You can grow anything in Mexico. That's what's so nice about Mexico. They have these giant mountains so they can do the hottest things. They can do the. They can do moderate things. The only thing they have problem with are things that need a cold snap. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's the only thing that things that require, like large temperature variations over the year, the only things that they can't do better than we can probably, you know.
- [11:19]
B
All right, so this week, it's been a long time, but I made some homemade ramen noodles that turned out pretty good. I did a experimental sort of hybrid ramen, so it was 30% of the fresh red wheat and then 40% Durham.
- [11:46]
A
Okay. Hey, Stas, what's the telephone equivalent of stink eye? Cause I know you're giving it to us right now. What is it?
- [11:55]
D
Looking on a website that has nothing to do with this conversation.
- [11:58]
A
Buying shoes on Zappos again. Bringing back the old style Nastasia. Just like. So for those of you who don't know, there's a friend of Nastasia who, like, literally every time I open my mouth, she could not pay attention for even 20 seconds. So she was on Tinder, and she was swiping left, right, left, right, left, right. I'm trying to give her instructions on how to drive my truck that, it turns out, didn't have brakes, and the back of the truck wasn't attached to the rear axle, and yet Nastasia was going to drive it up to Connecticut. True story. And, I mean, it had kind of had brakes, right? Nastasi kind of had brakes. And I'm like, listen. I'm like, the GPS is going to mess you up in this one place. You have to pay attention, or you can get vectored off into, like, a random place in the South Bronx, and you're not going to know how to get back to the highway. Left, right, left, right. How long were you guys lost over in Hunts Point?
- [12:49]
D
Half hour.
- [12:50]
A
Yeah. Yeah, that's what happens.
- [12:52]
C
I think. I think there's one thing that doesn't sound accurate. I'm pretty sure it would only have been left.
- [12:58]
A
Well, do you know who we're talking about? Which. Which one is accept? Left or right? Which is accepted?
- [13:03]
C
What do you think?
- [13:05]
A
I don't know. Like, I do not know her. This is. By the way, seriously, this is not code for Nastasia. This is an actual friend of Nastasia's. But I don't know. I don't know her dating history. She's a no. Always no. I don't know.
- [13:18]
C
I mean, most people are always no.
- [13:20]
A
Really?
- [13:21]
B
Yeah.
- [13:22]
A
Huh. Does the app keep track of how many times you swipe right and it's like, loser. You swept. You're too. You're not picky enough. You're booted.
- [13:30]
C
Does it know you'd be too desperate? They kick you off? Yeah, it'd be funny.
- [13:35]
A
Yeah, it would be. You have to do a certain number of nos or you get nuke. It's kind of like, remember when? I don't know if they still do this, but Spotify used to be like, you can't skip that one. You can't skip it. You're listening to all of Full Moon fever. You cannot skip it, remember? Anyway, they don't do that anymore, do they?
- [13:52]
C
I don't know. I don't use Spotify.
- [13:53]
A
All right, back to wheat. Quinn. So yeah, you were milling the Durham and what kind of red wheat? That's like over half the wheat in the world.
- [14:02]
B
No, the Durham was a store bought, like, not semolina, but like a finer durum flavor.
- [14:11]
A
Okay, well, why, why durum? Why durum and not semolina?
- [14:17]
B
The texture is like. I mean, I think for like especially a rolled, A rolled noodle, I think the finer flour gets you a better texture.
- [14:30]
A
I mean, the whole point of Durham in Italian pasta, to my knowledge of semolina specifically, is that it doesn't snap back. Right? Because it doesn't actually. It's not hyper. It's extensible, but not highly elastic, so it doesn't snap back. And also, even though it's extremely hard and has a very high. It's the hardest of all the weeds. Physically hardest and you breaking it. So normally you get a lot of damaged starch because you're doing semolina, which has no fines in it. It doesn't absorb that much water. So you can make an easily machined dough with lower hydrations that are better for things like pasta. That's the real reason to use durum. Not just because it sounds good to say durum semolina. Right. I mean, that's the purpose of it. So when you're using a flour, I would think it would take on more water. Now, maybe that's not as big a deal in ramen because you're not, I don't know, maybe you don't care as much. Right. But I'm just asking, like, and which red wheat were you using?
- [15:29]
B
It's a local heirloom variety. It's called catipwa ch.
- [15:35]
A
What
- [15:38]
B
spelled Kate K A T E P W A.
- [15:44]
A
Right. But it's a northern wheat, so it's a spring wheat. So interesting fact, all of the things 90% of the wheats that we consider heirloom in North America actually weren't popular before about 1880. So I guess, like, for me, I've met people from the 1880s. So to me, that's just like life, you know what I mean? But like, yeah, like, in other words, I think people are like, oh, and I'm not saying you're like this because I know you're not like this. We've had this discussion. But I'm saying people are like, ooh. For instance, people who think that somehow, like, New wheats are somehow like less healthy than old wheats. I mean, these things that we call heirloom wheats, it's not like, like they're the first things that were found in the Fertile Crescent and like someone scooped them up, you know what I mean? That's. I mean they have weeds that are like that, but these aren't those. Let's just be clear on that. So what kind of consue did you use for the bounce?
- [16:36]
B
Just sodium bicarbonate. I mean, not bicarbonate, sodium carbonate.
- [16:41]
A
You cooked it.
- [16:42]
B
And I do have, yeah, I do have potassium bicarbonate that I'm going to cook for next time. But yeah, I didn't have time to do both.
- [16:53]
A
Do you prefer a real like alkaline smelling noodle or do you prefer a less alkaline smelling noodle?
- [17:01]
B
Well, again, this one I'm going for like a little bit. Like again in between a pasta and a ramen. So this one was a low, a lower alkaline, but it's not as low as I've seen in some other recipes. So low end but not like, but not below.
- [17:20]
A
Speaking of alkaline, apparently, are we going to have Jorge on anytime soon or. We're waiting to reschedule because this is the new taco timeline.
- [17:29]
B
Yeah, I don't know. A date.
- [17:30]
A
Yeah. Because I'm interested in knowing over the past, when was the last time he was on like three, two years ago. Three years ago. I'm interested to know how much because I think for a while people who are doing nixtamalization, like, were like, to prove that they were nixtamalizing their corn, were like wicked cow flavor, like so caled that it was like, oh my God, alkaline. You know what I mean? Whereas I wonder whether that snapped back now that more people are doing it. You don't need to stamp everything with a signifier. I've done my own nixtamalization, you know what I'm saying? I think the same thing happened kind of with a ramen explosion maybe seven, eight years ago. I think Nastasia, we went to a ramen thing like this and some of the ones that people were making, they were just like so heavily alkaline because they're like, we're making our own noodles, so they're highlighting the alkaline nature. Whereas like once people get over that hump, they're kind of like, they pull back on it. Like kind of like giant American, United American States of America. Cabernets used to be like, you know, huge fruit bombs because we could do them. And then people were like, we don't want the huge fruit bombs. I actually still like those huge fruit bombs anyway. You get what I'm saying, Quinn?
- [18:35]
B
Yeah, Also, one of the questions that came in is sort of related to my ramen making. Let me go back to the sheet.
- [18:47]
A
Yeah, well, we'll get to it, because we're going to get to all the questions. But in the meantime, what do you got for me, other West Coast? What do you got, Stas?
- [18:57]
D
Well, it was your birthday. I want to know how it went.
- [19:01]
A
Oh, my actual birthday was yesterday, so I got to meet a nice young man from Safelight Repair and Safelight Replace, where I had to wait from, you know, the entire morning blocked off so that I could wait for him to come replace my cracked windshield. So that was fun, you know. Then I got to wait around another two hours to take the tape off said windshield. I got to change my windshield wiper blades. That was awesome. Had some failed particle analysis tests. That was kind of fun, you know what I mean? So, in general, like, you know, just awesome, awesome birthday vibes. You know what I mean? Standard birthday vibes.
- [19:38]
D
That's all you did.
- [19:40]
A
I had other disappointing things. I mean, I'm living up to my New Year's resolution, like, just more tiny failures. You know what I'm saying? I did one kind of interesting thing. I didn't get a chance to bake it off yet, but I'm gonna bake it off. So I built even a newer sifter. I don't know what got posted so far, but I built an even newer sifter. And, you know, I'll try to get around to putting the plans. I don't know how many people who are on our Patreon actually have, like, 3D printers and stuff that can actually build things if I give them the specs for it. But this sifter actually works really well compared to any other sifter I've used. And so I typically sift with 60 with a 60 mesh, which is 250 micron sieve. And then. But when I'm doing that, I'm grinding my wheat all the way down as fine as it goes, so it really gets damaged starch. So I tend not to ferment for a long time, not for, like, you know, 24 hours. Four hours. It's more like I'll do overnight on my starter refresh, and then I'll just make bread in, like, six hours. So I'm running a series of tests with a 50 mesh where I'm adjusting the extraction. So I have a 92% extraction, 86% extraction, a 70% extraction loaf right now that I've retarded in the fridge overnight. When I get home, I'm going to bake them off to see how much of a difference there is between those flowers. So that's birthday fun. No, that's just like says birthday all over it, doesn't it?
- [21:05]
C
Oh, yeah. Yep.
- [21:07]
A
Yeah. I mean, like, you know, what else could you hope for in life other than trying to figure out the minute differences between the performance of different flowers ground to different finesses and sifted through the same mesh? I mean, it doesn't get better, Stas. It's downhill from here. It's downhill from here. That's it. This is the high water mark. Anyway, what do you got?
- [21:36]
D
Me. I went to Moza last night and had Elizabeth. Elizabeth Faulkner was popping up and did a one night takeover there and it was really good.
- [21:44]
A
Oh, yeah. Now you have that bastardized version of I'm Popping up, going through my head. I'm popping up. That's what. Now that song is that fake version of that song. Is AI good enough yet? Where I can just tell it what lyrics I want to go to the original song. Just have it. Just redo it for me with the original person's voice. Is it good enough yet?
- [22:04]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [22:05]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [22:05]
A
I just need to pay the right people. Yeah, all right.
- [22:08]
C
Definitely.
- [22:10]
A
And speaking of. Well, we'll get to it later. And what do you got for me, Jack?
- [22:19]
C
I haven't done all that much this
- [22:20]
B
week because I'm sick.
- [22:21]
C
I got a cough.
- [22:22]
A
I got it in New York.
- [22:23]
C
Harris to. Oh, you know I did. I took Jessica Harris to Muno when I was out there in New York. Korean restaurant. It was great.
- [22:34]
A
I don't know.
- [22:34]
C
I don't have too much to say
- [22:35]
A
about it, but how's Jessica doing?
- [22:36]
C
Very good for the New York listeners. She's great.
- [22:40]
A
AKA Dr. Harris. How's she doing? Yeah, I haven't seen her a while. Nice.
- [22:44]
C
Well, Good to know Dr. Harris is doing Brian. Yeah.
- [22:47]
B
All right.
- [22:47]
A
All right, John. What's the great state of Connecticut telling me?
- [22:51]
C
I have not done too much lately, but getting ready for Easter weekend. Gonna do need to buy a spiral ham somewhere. I think Hummel does one. I'm a big fan of their hot dogs.
- [23:02]
A
Come on, man.
- [23:03]
B
Before.
- [23:03]
A
So come on, dude. Go to Milford. Go to the Honey Baked Ham Corporation. They literally invented the spiral ham slicer. You do not need to go buy anyone else's spiral ham. Dude, honey baked.
- [23:18]
C
I was looking at them too.
- [23:20]
A
Honey baked ham.
- [23:21]
C
I was looking at them, too.
- [23:22]
A
Yeah.
- [23:23]
B
Okay.
- [23:24]
C
Yeah.
- [23:25]
A
And don't let them sell you on the BS1. Don't let them sell you on the BS1. Get the full ham. You're gonna use the leftovers. If not, you can freeze it. You want the whole bone so that you can make soup later. You gotta get more professional.
- [23:39]
C
Yes, definitely getting that. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
- [23:41]
A
Also, what kind of oven do you have?
- [23:45]
C
Some Bosch thing that I'm really not a fan of.
- [23:50]
A
Here's the issue. Everyone knows this. I don't know why I'm. But I'm gonna tell you guys anyway. The honey baked hams, all those hams, they're already cooked. So as you're heating it, you are destroying it, Right. Unless you heat it very carefully, you are ruining the ham that you just paid for. Right? So the best way to do it, if you still have a working Anova Apo oven or you have one of the new 2.0s, is to, like, like, leave it, like, covered wrap, and just, like, slowly, like, over the course of many hours, heat it up to just warm, Like, I'm talking, like, 55, 56, 57 Celsius in that. In that range, like, 130s, like, below 140. Just get it all hot there. It's gonna weep a lot. But then you can have a whole hot ham, and you're not gonna destroy it. But don't, like, throw it into an oven for, like, a regular oven at two hours at, like, 350, and just don't ruin it. Don't. Don't be that. You know what I'm saying, John?
- [24:49]
B
Yeah.
- [24:50]
C
Gonna try and do my best.
- [24:51]
A
Yeah. All right. What kind of biscuit?
- [24:56]
C
Tbd, I guess. Gonna see what my mom wants to do.
- [25:01]
A
Well, what is her style of biscuit?
- [25:04]
C
I'm not sure, actually. She's all of a sudden very opinionated on it, so we'll see what she says later.
- [25:10]
A
How does someone who is old enough to be your mom all of a sudden get a biscuit opinion?
- [25:16]
C
Dude, it drives me crazy. She's trying to, like, fancy up her tried and true recipes. I got really upset with her a couple months ago because she added turmeric to mashed potatoes. For some reason, you're like, turmeric? Yeah, because some recipe said to do it.
- [25:35]
D
It's like, what the hell?
- [25:37]
A
You're like. The anthocyanin of note in mashed potatoes is carrots. If you want it to be orange carrots. Not Turmeric. Is that what you said to her and started crying?
- [25:46]
C
No, that's not what I said. I was just like, what is the point of this? Like, your regular mashed potatoes are great. You don't need to change it up. But yeah, so, yeah, that's the answer to that. Then Mac and cheese. And then we're gonna do eggs Benedict as well.
- [26:00]
A
Ooh, Are you gonna do traditional or cirque on the Benedict for the eggs?
- [26:08]
C
How's the cirque? Oh, no, no, Traditional. Traditional.
- [26:12]
B
Yeah.
- [26:13]
A
I have to say, like, you know, for service. Nothing beats a circulator because obviously you can keep them in their shell. Nothing. But the minute I learned, you could just crack all the eggs into a bowl or a colander and dump them into the water and poach them all at once, I was like, what? Why have I been alive so long? What is wrong?
- [26:33]
C
Exactly?
- [26:34]
A
You know what I mean? It's like, you know, like when Galileo was like the, The. The. The sun. Like, you know, we're not the center of the. Of the universe. People are like, what? You know what I mean? It's like that with the poached eggs. You know what I'm saying? It's like such. It's just. I feel so stupid, like, for the first. Whatever it was 40 something years of my life. All right, and are you getting. What? What, What? Hamilo. Are you gonna use leftover spiral ham for your Benedict? You're not gonna go get, like, peameal bacon or something like this?
- [27:04]
B
All right.
- [27:05]
A
Okay. And what was the last. Oh, is your mom gonna do grated frozen butter? Because I do think that's quite good in a biscuit.
- [27:15]
C
Yes, that. I don't really care what she thinks about that. That I am going to do. Yes.
- [27:20]
A
Buttermilk as liquid.
- [27:23]
C
I'm sorry?
- [27:24]
A
Buttermilk as liquid.
- [27:27]
C
I think she usually does milk, but
- [27:28]
A
I'm gonna try and get buttermilk soda plus powder.
- [27:35]
D
I haven't.
- [27:38]
C
I've only done soda, actually. I haven't done. Plus the powder.
- [27:40]
A
Yeah, I always did powder and then a little bit of soda to counteract the buttermilk. The other one. That's nice. A little bit is, you know, if you're not gonna grind your own flour, which you're not. Cause who is, right? A little bit of, like, chapati flour, a little bit of atta. Gives a nice wheatiness to a biscuit without. Really. Yeah. My favorite commercially available whole wheat flour. Now, remember, it soaks up a lot of water because they grind it extremely fine and they heat the Hell out of it. So it's got a lot of starch damage, so it becomes like kind of a water hog, but ata flour.
- [28:19]
B
Okay.
- [28:19]
A
Anyway, yeah, it's fun. Fun to mess around with. Nice. Am I missing anyone? Did I miss anyone? No. Good. Desert platypus writes in. I'm wondering if you guys can go into the. I'm not gonna go too far into the weeds. Desert platypus, because otherwise, you know, stars will send snake eye over the. Over the waves and kill me. By the way, platypuses, they're a water based creature. What would a little desert platypus be, you think? I don't know. We'll figure it out.
- [28:50]
B
About to die.
- [28:51]
A
Oh, good point, good point. Are they endangered anyway? Platypi, Is that an endangered species?
- [29:00]
B
I don't know.
- [29:02]
A
Weird little. Weird little suckers. I was wondering if we can go into the weeds on frozen drink machine cocktails. Use of additives such as poly D, which is polydextrose people, Xanthan, methylcel, et cetera, et cetera, abv, sugar and dilution targets. Alternatively, any resources out there that might be worth looking at? Well, when the update to my book comes out, there will be several thousand words on this subject. But if you can't wait for that on polyd, I use polyd in general. You know who uses poly D a lot in frozen drinks is Mike Capoferri over at Thunderbolt Night on Earth, and he swears that it has a freezing depression effect. I don't really know why, because it's polymerized and so freezing depression usually has to do with the size of the molecule. Hold on then, I'll let you debunk me in a minute. However, when you're adding it, there are steric effects. So even if it's not actually lowering the freezing point per se of the mixture, something that has like an actual bodying or steric effect can affect the crystal size and make it appear to have a freezing depression. What are you gonna say, Quinn?
- [30:15]
B
Well, at least the one I got from modernist Pantry. They have like a spec sheet and there's a pretty detailed breakdown. There is a little bit of regular dextrose and a few other compounds that are like in the mix. So I think I ran the numbers. It's about 15% relative to regular sugar for the freezing point depression.
- [30:49]
A
Well, which polydextrose are you using?
- [30:54]
B
Modernist pantry.
- [30:55]
A
Yeah, because they're also all different. How neutral is Modernist Pantries? Is it dead?
- [31:02]
B
Yeah, I mean, again, I don't. I used it A little bit more in frozen desserts. So I haven't used, like.
- [31:10]
A
You haven't tasted a lot of it,
- [31:11]
B
but yeah, it seems pretty neutral. Yeah, I haven't tasted it directly.
- [31:15]
A
So listen, the way freezing point works, it's. It's a colligative property and it's literally based on the number of moles of something you dump in. So the actual number of atoms that are being. That are being dissolved into your. Into your substance. So as a highly. More highly polymerized the. The dextro in polydextrose, the ones that are like, you know, dozens of dextrose molecules long, obviously. Well, I don't know how long they are. Let's say it's 10 long, right? 10 dextroses in a row has one tenth for a given weight, one tenth of the antifreezing power that a single dextrose would have. So everything depends on the degree of polymerization of the dextrose, the average degree of polymerization, and it changes from polydextrose to polydextrose. In any event, it's gonna have some effect, but I wouldn't know that that would be the primary effect. It might also have an effect on crystal structure based on just the fact that you're adding a bunch to it. So anyway, Mike would be the one to talk to because he's experimented a lot with polydextrose in frozen cocktails that he doesn't want to be sweet for. Xanthan. The thing we want to be careful with in xanthan you. Is that when you're taking a. First of all, you know, the way that I construct frozen drinks and the way that I recommend everybody construct frozen drinks is to. Is to choose an alcohol content, a sugar content, and then an acid content. Right. First choose whatever your. Usually your alcohol is and then add the alcohol numbers to get to where you want. Then add the sugar number. Choose a batch size. So, like, I'm going to make 1,000, like, grams. A thousand mils, right? You know, roughly somewhere. And you're like, okay, how much alcohol is it going to take to make, you know, a thousand mils? The level that I want, how much sugar will that take? So you're. Some of your alcohols are going to have sugar. So then you add sugars in. You figure out how much of those other things already have acid. Then that's the last thing you adjust. And then you just add water to a thousand. That's the way you do it. When you're freezing, you're freezing a lot of the water. That's in the mix into ice. And so when that happens, right. Your concentration of things like xanthan get much higher. Now typically in a frozen drink machine, you'll have like probably half of your water frozen. And so you need to be careful because if your xanthan levels are too high, even close to too high, the drink will get chewy. Especially because sugar's also getting concentrated and alcohol is getting concentrated as they freeze out. And so you'll get a chewy result. So your mileage may vary, but I tend to shoot for about 0.08%. So that's like a little under a gram of xanthan per kilo of mix. You can go up, you can go down. But I really don't like my frozen drinks to get chewy. And the advantage here is you usually have enough water that you can just zip it into the water and let it hydrate for as long as you want. It's not like when you're making a blender drink and you don't have time for it to fully hydrate. You have time for it to fully hydrate if you're adding things like methylcel to it or any whipping agent like coconut milk. And if you're going to use coconut milk or coconut, there's a reason people use Coco Lopez. It's very, very highly stabilized, right? So like a lot of coconut. Coconut fat is extremely hard at frozen temperatures and so it tends to separate pretty badly. That's why if you're gonna do it, unless you're really good at what you're doing, just get the pre stabilized garbage that everyone uses, because that's the reason we all use it. But all of those things tend to aerate. And when you aerate something right, you're putting the air acts as an insulator. So that's another way to reduce the first of all, it makes things look nice and fluffy and they taste fluffy. It's going to taste less cold on your mouth, but it will melt slower because you've whipped air into it. So same with ice cream. The denser the ice cream is, probably the more melt you'll get because you're not getting the insulation from the air cells. So those are the main things on those. What I tend to shoot for is I shoot for about 10% alcohol. My old recipes are like 14 and they're delicious, but they're cold as hell. So they'll give you a little bit of a brain freeze and they melt really quickly. So right now I shoot for between 10 and 10 and a half percent alcohol. Sometimes down to about 9 and about a point lower in sugar, so about 9 to 9.5% sugar. And then somewhere in the area of, like, 0.7 to 0.8% acid. Usually like 0.75, 0.8 acid. And those are the numbers that I try to hit out. And there you go. Also, remember, if you're using something like honey, even though alcohol. I forget what it is. Quinn will remember because he thinks about this all the time, but alcohol is, I think, roughly, like, somewhere in the area of five to seven times eight. Yeah. More freeze.
- [36:09]
B
By math, pure ethanol is nine times antifreezing of sugar.
- [36:17]
A
Nine. There you go. But it doesn't really work out that way because alcohol also makes things melt faster than sugar.
- [36:22]
B
Yeah, I know.
- [36:23]
A
The thing that the AFP people don't tell you is that, like, higher alcohol stuff just melts, tends to melt faster. And I think that's an entropy situation, but I don't want to get into it. So anyway, so that's how I do it. Was that enough in the weeds there, Quinn? We good? We covered.
- [36:39]
B
Yeah, I guess. So. What are numbers? If you are using mesocel, like, you gave the 0.08 for the Xanthem, what's the rough range for methafil?
- [36:53]
A
Oh, I don't know. I'd have to go look. Not much. It doesn't take much. Like, I mean, I wouldn't go over. I wouldn't go over a quarter percent. I'd have to go look at how I didn't look that up. I'd have to go look at what my. My general methyl goop is. More xanthan plus methylcel. You know, goop. I have to go look at what those numbers are in a cocktail, but it doesn't take much. But remember, with methylcel, always use F50, nothing else. Only F50. And what you want to do is you can just whisk the methylcel into hot water. Especially if you're making a big batch, whisk it into hot water, it will disperse because it's completely insoluble in hot water. Then when you add it to your main batch, as it cools down towards room temperature, it will go clear and start to hydrate. You just don't want it to clump up, which it will if you put it directly into cold water. All right. Rock Baker says I'm macerating fresh sliced strawberries and a bit of sugar. Is there any way to preserve their color for more than a day or two? Well, I guess it depends on what you mean. You mean you're losing the color because you're leaching it out or it's actually browning. You're getting oxidative browning. If you're getting oxidative browning, try adding some ascorbic acid to it or any form of acid if you don't want it to taste acidic. Ascorbic acid is a good choice because it doesn't taste as acidic as things like, say, citric things like this. And it's also an antioxidant in its own from the acidity inhibiting the enzymes that are naturally present in a strawberry. If you, I don't know, have more time and energy or don't mind getting non food safe stuff, you can also get sodium. And I'm going to say it wrong. You can get spa down, whichever. It's a sulfuric acid with one hydrogen taken away. Hey, did you guys read that somebody was dumping a bunch of arsenic into a food supply and poisoning a bunch of people recently?
- [38:50]
C
No. That's terrible.
- [38:52]
A
It was. They were using sulfi. They were using something that had been treated with sulfuric acid that had arsenic as a byproduct manufacturer because they weren't sourcing food grade stuff on a commercial level. It'll come back to me. It'll come back to me. But yeah, use food grade stuff. Anyway,
- [39:13]
C
quick side note, just so we can get some upcoming things in so everyone knows we got some great upcoming guests coming on next week. We've got George Moats coming on to talk about his new edition of his burger book.
- [39:24]
A
Oh, that's next week?
- [39:26]
C
Yep.
- [39:27]
A
Nice.
- [39:28]
C
Yep. Exciting. We're gonna have Faride come on and talk about her new hot dog book soon. We've got Greg Backstrom coming up to talk about his new book.
- [39:37]
A
Wait, wait. Who wrote the hot dog book?
- [39:41]
C
Faride Quinn. Do you remember her last name?
- [39:47]
A
Does. Does Robert. Does Robert Simonson know? Can we get them to come in and do a jello mask wrestling match? That'd be amazing.
- [39:59]
B
Faraday is well, well known. She's very frequent on the munchies media empire and she's got her own.
- [40:08]
A
So what I'm. What I'm imagining is right, there's these. There's publishers, and they're like, everyone on their desk gets the hot dog book pitch, and then it's a mad race to get the hot dog book out. To be the person to plant your flag in hot dogs.
- [40:22]
B
Yeah.
- [40:23]
A
You know what I mean? And she's the winner.
- [40:25]
C
The George Boats of hot dogs. Yeah.
- [40:28]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, listen, how Long from now is that going to happen. So we, we need to figure out if we can source. We need to figure out if we can source some of these hot dogs then. Speaking of hot dogs, it's a one day chili dog event at, at Hamburger America, I think on Thursday. But they're using Sabrette, so they're not using some rare hot dog that New Yorkers can't otherwise get. You know what I mean?
- [41:00]
C
Bummers. Yeah, I mean, you know. And then last upcoming guest, I'll need to confirm the date, but listener Alex Hawk, who is the manager of culinary innovation in the US and Canada for Burger King, he'll be coming on with his colleague Zach Young, who's the director of culinary and commercialization over at Burger King. So I think that'll be a pretty cool conversation.
- [41:24]
A
Nice. Sounds good. All right, so a chock full. And by the way, if you want to ask questions of these people, what should you do?
- [41:35]
B
Either email us.
- [41:37]
C
DM us ask on the Patreon, right?
- [41:42]
A
Yes. Join the Patreon. That is what I was looking for. Ding, ding, ding, ding. All right, make sure we. We're gonna make sure we get their book, their books on our kitchen arts and letters discount buy so that people can buy it from someone who is not part of an evil empire. Rock Baker wants to know. Sometimes I just can't get a nice crust on my creme brulee. It ends up very uneven, burning in spots and pale in others. There doesn't appear to be a visible moisture on the surface. So, you know, even I use a naked torch on creme brulee because that's what you need to do. I would say, Rock Baker, just pull back. Just pull back a little bit over it. You don't need to go that fast on the creme brulee. I don't think you're going to melt out the creme brulee if you get enough sugar, if you get a nice even sugar coating across the top, you're not going to melt out the custard before you get a nice crackle. So just pull back a little bit. You got anything John on that, or is that what you would say?
- [42:41]
C
No, I'd say the same thing. Yeah. Just toy with the distance between the flame and the sugar.
- [42:46]
A
Yeah, yeah. Because the issue is as soon as it starts to melt, as soon as it starts to melt, as soon as it starts to brown at all, it becomes more absorptive. It becomes more absorptive of the energy. And so once brown, browner, it becomes. So you want to kind of move away from areas that have started. You want to get it all melted before anything starts to brown and then quickly brown it. And so you can move around and not stay on one spot and scorch it. You know what I mean? This is why. Have you ever had microwave bread? What did you say? You don't even need to. You can, but you can get it done in one shot. You know what I mean? Like, you know, imagine if you're doing 100 of them. You don't want to keep doing. You know what I mean? It's, like, true. But here's an interesting phenomenon. You ever go to a place and they serve you a sandwich, and the roll has these weird spots that are intensely chewy in it. Has it ever happened to you? Yeah. What that is is it's another microwave phenomenon where as soon as a portion of the bread dries out, right, it'll brown and get all crunchy and weird. So, like a roll that was unevenly microwaved to either thaw it or refresh it after it had gone stale, you get these characteristic hard spots because it will all of a sudden go from being fine to being, like, crazy effed up like that. Anyway. Which is weird, because, anyway, whatever Sazarik wants to know, I'm trying to achieve silky. This is more triggering stuff for Nastasia because we got more fresh pasta stuff going on. She's getting it from all sides. Today. I took Nastasia. She was in New York last week. She was on the radio program Live here in the studio. And just to be mean, I walked her because she didn't want to chill at my bar because there was a buyout, so we went to a different bar. So in order to be mean, how
- [44:41]
D
are we supposed to die out?
- [44:43]
A
What error. But in order to be mean, I walked her next to a fresh pasta place where the fresh pasta was right in the window, and I was like. And she was like, I want to vomit. And then break their window with a brick. Anyway, I did not say that. What did you say? Something very much like that. I'm paraphrasing slightly.
- [45:04]
B
Slightly, no,
- [45:08]
A
by the way. So, like, someone said, so Naztazia and I want you to buy Searsall Pros from Monera's Pantry, because, frankly, the Searsall Pro is better than the Searzall. I mean, we redesigned it. It's better. We never. Because we got hosed by Amazon. Yada, yada, yada. Cry me a river. We never sold as many of those as we should have, but they are actually A superior implement. You need to use map gas with them to get the benefit. And you need to use like TS8000 grade torch with like 14,000 or higher BTUs putting out. And they scream, they're monsters. They're awesome. Anyway, so you can buy them now in Moner's pantry. They cost more than I want them to, but you should buy them anyway because they are worth it. Even at the ridiculous price that we have to charge because of how much we're being charged for it. That's not the point. How do we even get to that? What were we even talking about? We're talking about me being mean to you. You being. Oh yeah. So we're recording a video and we did it outside of a well known funeral home in the East Village and saying, you know, our business will be dead if you don't do it. And someone was like, if you watch the video without sound on, it sounds like you're making fun of dead people. I was like, what? First of all, there are so many dead people. I don't know. I don't get it. There's so many dead people. How can I make fun of them all? There's so many more dead people than there are live people. You know what I mean? I can't possibly make fun of them all.
- [46:29]
D
Oh no.
- [46:30]
B
What oh no?
- [46:32]
A
What are you now watching without the sound?
- [46:34]
D
That's not good. Well, yeah, I don't know.
- [46:37]
A
You know what? You can't win. You just can't win. You know what I'm saying? But hey, that's my New Year's resolution. Many, many small losses. Sazarik is trying to achieve silky tag at home. Can I cheat the at yolk requirement by using olive oil instead? And is it okay to let my KitchenAid roller do 90% of the kneading for me after I just bring it together? Well, on the latter part, I'm gonna go ahead and say yes. By the way, I forget his name. But the person who did the, who teaches the culinary arts to the people in the prison outside of Detroit was on the radio show maybe two years ago. They did a documentary on him. I watched that documentary and that's where I learned for the very first time, in a similar way to the egg thing, that you can, you can oroboros your pasta dough and like turn it into like, like, like a one continuous loop and then just keep it going through the rollers and you never have the stupid ends. Right now that's not going to work for the kneading because with the kneading, you're going to want to fold it, you're going to want to keep folding it. But once you're done. And so if you're quote unquote, kneading in your rollers, right. Then what you're gonna do is, yeah, you get it together and then you keep folding it and putting it through the rollers until it looks homogenous, but then you want to ouroboros that thing so you can like get a nice, nice, perfect, perfect sheet. Was that cold water Prison, not cold water. Was it? Maybe. Okay. My memory for names of things just goes out of my head. But my memory for things I've learned about pasta machines does not. You know what I mean?
- [48:20]
B
I believe the documentary was called Cold Water Kitchen.
- [48:23]
A
Yeah, it was. There you go. That's true. Yeah. But like, you know, like, they're gonna, like. The last thing they're gonna do before they put the. Before they jack me at the end is gonna. They're gonna say, what about pasta? And be like, you can join the sheets ends. Then I'm gonna be dead. Right. Sauce. That's how it's gonna work. As for the yolks, I would say, can you cheat the 8 yolk requirement and use olive oil instead? Olive oil? No. I'm gonna say no. I'm gonna go ahead and say no. You can use olive oil. It's gonna make the dough softer. It's not gonna make it.
- [48:55]
C
Yeah, you're not gonna. Yeah, it doesn't work.
- [48:58]
A
Yes, it will be softer. Right. It will inhibit gluten formation. It will make it easier to roll out. All of that is true. It doesn't have any of the emulsifiers and the phospholipids and stuff that egg yolks are going to have. It also doesn't bring any extra protein to it. It's also, you know. Yeah. Probably will leach out in the water
- [49:22]
C
and it'll tear quickly too. When you start getting it out to the thinness that you want for certain pastas.
- [49:28]
A
Yeah. So I'm going to say no. You with me? You with me, John?
- [49:32]
B
Yep.
- [49:33]
A
100% that said no. Okay. Tyv Mush says, why is it. And I'm going to push back on you, Tyv. Why is it so easy to over hydrate a dough, for example? In other words, why is it easy to put more water than you want, but it is nearly impossible to add more flour to fix it? Is there a trick to quickly bringing the hydration back down to a workable level? It all depends on how and what equipment you're using to mix. There's nothing easier on earth than getting flour into a dough when you're working it by hand. Right. So, you know, I would say, you know, certain machines have an issue. So for instance, my Ankarsrum is good at putting flour into doughs, but that you have over hydrated, but not good at putting. But not good at putting moisture in because it just slaps it around, doesn't get the moisture in. KitchenAids might have the opposite problem. So I think it really depends on whatever technique you're using to do it. But your hands can always kind of fix this problem. What?
- [50:44]
B
Yeah, I was going to say I actually intentionally do this with the rollers in my ramen dough because ramen dough is like incredibly like stiff even relative to its hydration compared to like a non alkaline dough. So I make a dough with a higher hydration first.
- [51:13]
A
Yeah, well, maybe that's also because you're using durum flour, Mr. Starch damage, Mr. Damaged starch, Durham flour.
- [51:20]
B
I've had this effect with other ramen dough as well. I'm just messing, but I'm literally working in a specific amount of flour with the rollers to bring the hydration back down.
- [51:37]
A
One other thing I will say about working things in, certain things are very hard to work in later. I mean, the, the. For instance, salt, kosher salt, very hard to work into a dough once it's already been fully hydrated. Right. Because it just is. So what I do for that, because I follow his name, just went on my head. Raza Katie Parlor wrote his book for him. Just went on my head anyway.
- [52:06]
C
Van Reicher.
- [52:08]
A
Yeah, yeah. So like in the pizza book which Katy Parlor wrote, you know, he does the, you know, what they call an autolyze step, but he basically makes the full dough, lets it sit for, you know, 30 minutes, half hour to like kickstart like what's going on, and then puts the salt in, does it all by hand. And that has a tendency, if you use diamond kosher like I do, to clump. So you want to powderize it. So I put my. I have a little bullet blender that I, you know, I just happen to have it because I used it for testing frozen drinks actually. And so, so I powder my salt and then I can put it in, and then you can just put it in by hand and it goes in quickly and doesn't leave any lumps or any problems. Flour doesn't have that problem because it's flour. So you can get it to go in. If you just dust it and kind of work, knead it in as though you were kneading dough by hand. I find it more difficult. Other people find it easy. I find it more difficult to put water in when you're working by hand because it has a tendency to slip around. So for that, I do the thing where you push your fingers into it, you make the little dimples, and then you squeeze a little bit of water into it, and then you loop over it and you go back and forth, and eventually you get it in. But I don't know, you know, what the hand car's from. Maybe someone can tell me. So I have a Swedish mixer and Karsram, which kicks butt for bread. Kicks butt for most things for rolls and stuff like that. The one thing that I have a real problem with is getting butter into brioche style things because it just slicks up the outside. So the kitchenaid with the way that it moves, or even the Bosch with the way that it moves it, it always folds the dough in a way where the butter gets to the inside of the dough quickly and then it can incorporate. Whereas the incarsorum has a tendency to just smash the butter into the outside of the dough ball. So what makes it very gentle with your doughs and not over oxidizing of your doughs. And so you get a lot of higher rise out of certain things. Also, I think makes it more difficult for brioche, but maybe someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong. Anything else on this? Are we good?
- [54:04]
B
Good.
- [54:04]
A
Good.
- [54:05]
B
Yeah.
- [54:06]
A
Wire monkey writes. Do you have a good resource for finding the nutritional information of nuts? The context is there was a shop in Oakland that made Pacojet nut sorbet. Recipes that were like nothing I've ever had before or since. By the way, people, we're gonna be talking about pistachios. So, like, I know when I was reading this, maybe when you're hearing me talk about it, you're like, well, there's a lot of different kind of nuts. Dave. What nuts are we talking about? The recipes that we're gonna be discussing here are pistachio. Okay. I'm just saying that. Okay. Like, nothing I've ever had before or since. And the owner apparently used a very specific ratio of fat, sugars, waters, and salt, water and solids for his recipes. Yeah, but who doesn't use a very specific ratio for everything? If you're not using a very specific ratio, you're just shooting in the dark, are you? Not everyone has a specific Ratio. Anyway, I tried one of the adapted and approximated recipes available on the Ninja Creamy, and the result was. I'm gonna think. I think there was a typo here. I think Wiremonkey meant to write and the result was not as good as I remembered. So I like to try and Wiremonkey wrote as good, but I think they meant not as good. So I'm gonna assume that's what they meant as I remembered. So I'd like to try and recreate his ratio if possible. When I looked up the nutritional information on the USDA database, it has information on water and fat, but not sugar specifically. Just carbohydrates generally. I know a refractometer would probably be the best way to get sugar info, not really on nuts, but here's why. Everything that's in that this is why you can't use a refractometer on milk, because milk has all of these, all the fats in it. All those things mess with your refractometer reading viciously. So it's almost impossible to measure things with fats or with other random crap in it. Right? So once you're beyond things that are very easily characterized, like make sure that sugar or alcohol on its own or salt on its own, it becomes very, very difficult. So refractometer is not going to be your friend in this case, except for on individual ingredients before the nuts go in. Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah, I know a fractometer would probably be the best way to get the sugar info. But one, I'm on a tight budget at the moment. Fair. And two, trying to get an overall sense of how this person made his sorbet so that any and all the information I get towards that end would be helpful. All right, so the one that you didn't like was take 7.0, take 390 grams of water, 130 grams of unsalted pistachios, 98 grams of sugar, and 2.8 grams of salt, throw it into a Vitamix, blend it all to hell and gone freeze it and creamitate it. That's the recipe that was used. Now, I looked at the website that was linked to. It was joyofblending.com and I'll have to say this, the color on that was ugly, right? So what that leads me to believe is that they were using pistachios that still had the husk on the outside of them. So if you. The easiest way to get really delicious pistachio is to go buy Italian pistachio puree, because it's green as all get out. And it's delicious because when they do it, they steam those suckers, they rub off all of the skin on the outside of the nut, right? And you get a beautiful puree, right? And you're paying the money for it. But guess what? That's delicious. Another thing you can before this is before we talk about ratios. I said this before, but I'll say it again. If you're buying shelled pistachio nuts, the ones that we get in the number 10 cans, I'm not going to say it's bazzini, right? But probably it's bazazini in a number 10 can. It has a bunch of them in that aren't as good as. And if you blend that whole thing together without looking first, right, you're going to get some of those very few things taste as bad as a bad pistachio. You know what I mean? For as good as a good pistachio is, a bad pistachio is just make you cry for like 10 minutes. It's so sad, right? So you got to look through all the pistachios that said all of those things. All of those things said. And I'm sure Quinn on the way out will have something to say about the actual specs of the recipe here, but the issue of you not being able to find the sugar. And by the way, this pistachios have roughly 7.7 grams of sugar per 100 grams of nuts, which is higher than most other nuts. Cashews come in around 6 and almonds about 4.4. Although almonds are very variable depending on which cultivar you're using. Here is a main and crazy problem. When you went on the USDA database, you were looking in the foundation section because it sounds like all of the information would be in the foundation database. And for some unknown reason, the USDA has many databases with different food things in. You want to look in the legacy database. If you look in the legacy database, if you search pistachio and then say it says, oh, there's one foundation record, that's where you went. No information on the sugar. If you click the legacy button, it will take you to a different record where they will tell you exactly how much sugar is in a pistachio. So that's the answer to that. Quinn, you got any info for the sorbet before I hit one thing on the way out?
- [59:10]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think honestly, yeah. Find reliable data like Dave said, by checking the different USDA sources you will search if there's any just recent papers that we're analyzing?
- [59:26]
A
No, but I mean on the spec itself. On the spec itself. You're Mr.
- [59:30]
B
Specific. Yeah, I would say there's probably not enough antifreezing power. Wait.
- [59:39]
A
Okay.
- [59:40]
B
Because the sugar seemed kind of low.
- [59:43]
A
All right. Now, Danny G. Had a question for me. I have a question back so I can answer your question. Danny G. Has had bad luck with my off on off on high heat grilling method that I like and John likes. It's always coming out kind of crappy and with a sallow crust, kind of overcooked. All sad in general. Danny, I need to know this, but I'll answer your question. My guess and John, you can back me up on this. My guess is that your heat is not high enough that you're thinking like normal human being grill. When I'm doing off on off on cooking. I want to make my grill hotter than the surface of the sun. You want hot hot hot hot hot hot hot, hot hot or you're not going to be able to get the on off off on to work. John, do you agree that that's probably the problem but we need more information from Danny G. Yeah, you want like
- [60:22]
C
really high searing temperatures every single time.
- [60:25]
A
So Danny, get back to us. Get back to us with your set up. What?
- [60:29]
B
I think the protein is too thin.
- [60:32]
A
Well, yeah, but you could do with anything. I do with the chicken thighs. I do it. The things that are pounded thin it like it like it all depends on what your incident heat what your incident like radiation is off of your heat thing. So we need to know your setup, Danny. Then we can troubleshoot you. All right. This has been cooking issues.