Ep. 676: Jesse Griffiths Earns a Michellin Star

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast: Episode 676 Summary

Title: Jesse Griffiths Earns a Michelin Star
Release Date: March 17, 2025
Host: Steven Rinella
Guest: Jesse Griffiths, Author of The Hog Book and The Turkey Book
Podcast Network: The MeatEater Podcast Network

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Introduction

In Episode 676 of The MeatEater Podcast, host Steven Rinella welcomes renowned Texan chef and author Jesse Griffiths. Jesse shares his journey as an advocate for wild hogs and turkeys, detailing his culinary expertise and the recent accolade of earning a Michelin Green Star for his restaurant, Dai Due. The episode delves into Jesse's sustainable sourcing practices, innovative recipes, and his commitment to improving the back-of-house experience for his staff.

Jesse Griffiths: Author and Chef

Jesse Griffiths is celebrated for his creative approach to cooking wild hogs and turkeys. As the author of The Hog Book and The Turkey Book, Jesse provides comprehensive guides on preparing these often-overlooked meats. Renowned for telling readers "what you know to be true from a career of working in them," Jesse dispels myths about wild hogs being inedible and offers practical advice on handling and cooking them.

Notable Quote:

"The Hog Book is no guesswork. It's no rumor. It's just like what you know to be true from a career of working in them."
— Jesse Griffiths [03:57]

Achieving the Michelin Green Star

Jesse's restaurant, Dai Due, recently earned a Michelin Green Star, recognizing its commitment to sustainability and ethical sourcing. Unlike traditional Michelin stars, the Green Star emphasizes environmentally friendly practices, local sourcing, and social responsibility. Jesse explains that the Green Star was awarded based on Dai Due's adherence to these principles without actively seeking the accolade.

Notable Quotes:

"We don’t get nominated. You don’t put in for it or anything. An inspector comes along, you don’t know."
— Jesse Griffiths [44:24]

"If I had to pick one of those two things, I would absolutely take the green star, because that is the goal that we've worked to since day one."
— Jesse Griffiths [48:22]

Sustainable Sourcing and Menu Innovation

Dai Due prides itself on sourcing ingredients locally, supporting sustainable and ethical farming practices. Jesse discusses the challenges of maintaining a consistent supply of wild hogs and the necessity of pivoting to alternative sources when primary suppliers face shortages. The restaurant's menu reflects a dedication to utilizing every part of the animal, minimizing waste, and offering unique dishes that highlight the flavors of wild game.

Notable Quote:

"What’s important is sourcing almost everything. Direct purchasing, ethical processes, even employee programs."
— Jesse Griffiths [44:24]

Additionally, Dai Due actively combats invasive species like feral hogs by incorporating them into their menu, thereby supporting ecological balance while offering diners exceptional cuisine.

Enhancing the Back-of-House Experience

Jesse places significant emphasis on the welfare and development of his back-of-house staff. Through innovative programs, employees receive resources such as cookbooks and engage in monthly challenges designed to deepen their culinary skills and foster a sense of community. These initiatives not only enhance employee satisfaction but also ensure consistency and excellence in the kitchen.

Notable Quote:

"We try to add value to the back of the house experience through that, through this program specifically."
— Jesse Griffiths [58:36]

Culinary Techniques and Recipes

The conversation explores various cooking techniques Jesse employs to make wild meats more palatable and enjoyable. From brining and sous vide methods to creative dishes like turkey confit and wild boar meatballs, Jesse shares insights into preparing game meats that retain their natural flavors while achieving tenderness and complexity.

Notable Quotes:

"Braising meats like stew meat, or if you want to make a sugo or a ragu, no better meat than rib meat."
— Jesse Griffiths [74:29]

"The green star was our way of recognizing that we could provide high-quality, sustainable food that supports our community."
— Jesse Griffiths [48:22]

Challenges and Controversies

Despite its successes, Jesse acknowledges the challenges of maintaining sustainability standards and the occasional misalignment with suppliers. Issues such as mislabeled products and the ethical implications of sourcing practices are discussed, highlighting the importance of vigilance and integrity in the restaurant industry.

Notable Quote:

"We've had farmers show up and swear up and down that they grew this thing, and then we find a little grown in Mexico sticker on one of them."
— Jesse Griffiths [76:48]

Future Endeavors and Community Initiatives

Looking ahead, Jesse contemplates authoring a third book focused on deer, aiming to fill a niche in culinary literature. Additionally, he discusses upcoming community projects, including a fundraiser for habitat preservation through organized hunting events, which blend his passions for conservation, community engagement, and sustainable hunting.

Notable Quote:

"People are going to be like, I need the series. They’re going to be like, I need the trilogy."
— Jesse Griffiths [84:52]

Conclusion

Episode 676 offers an in-depth look into Jesse Griffiths' commitment to sustainable cooking, ethical sourcing, and community-focused initiatives. His recognition with a Michelin Green Star serves as a testament to his dedication to excellence and environmental stewardship. Listeners gain valuable insights into the intersection of outdoor life, culinary arts, and conservation, inspiring a deeper appreciation for sustainably sourced wild foods.

Final Thoughts:

"You have to have that little bit of creativity or every recipe needs to have this one different technique, different ingredient or something that is simple that's just gonna elevate that beyond all the recipes they've already seen."
— Jesse Griffiths [114:31]

For those interested in sustainable dining and adventurous cuisine, Jesse Griffiths' work at Dai Due exemplifies how passion and responsibility can culminate in award-winning culinary excellence.

Transcript

[Stephen Rinella]

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[Jesse Griffiths]

We hunt with the Meat Eater Podcast.

[Stephen Rinella]

You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by first Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging de deer stands or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light.com f I R-S-T l I-T-E.com joined today by world famous Texan Jesse Griffiths, author of the very creatively titled the Hog Book and the Turkey Book just comes right out and tells you what the book is.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, pretty clear.

[Stephen Rinella]

You don't need to look at that book and wonder what those books are about.

[Jesse Griffiths]

No, by design.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, I've accused him of being a wild hog Apologist Jesse Griffiths knows how to make phenomenal stuff out of wild hogs of all varieties. And the Hog Book tells you all about how to do that, top to bottom. Anyone that tells you, oh, you can't eat them, and you can eat them when they're this age or eat them at that age, or eat them when they're £120. £120. Or pregnant or not pregnant. Or if you ever want to know, like, what is actually up about wild hogs from a guy who has handled more, this is a bold statement. I'm gonna stick by it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

We can vet it. I'll. I'll be honest.

[Stephen Rinella]

A guy that has handled. Okay. A guy that has handled and served more wild hog meat than anybody on the planet.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I mean, I don't know. It'd be hard to quantify, but an awful lot. How about a lot, a lot, a lot? Hundreds, if not thousands.

[Stephen Rinella]

Butchered a lot.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Seen a lot of them dead, Served.

[Stephen Rinella]

A lot of them.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Served a lot of them.

[Stephen Rinella]

Eaten a pile of them.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, the Hog Book is no. It's no guesswork. It's no rumor. It's just like what you know to be true from a career of working in them.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. It was like answers to questions. And people would, you know, over the years be like, what? You know, can you eat them if they're 120 pounds and over? Can you eat a boar? Can you eat them? A sow? If it's not pregnant, you need a sow if it is pregnant. You know, what's your favorite recipe? Name it, and, you know, just kind of a compilation of answers, questions that I got.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then follow that up with the turkey book, which tells you everything you'd ever want to know about preparing turkeys. Preparing every part of every part of every turkey.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yep, Definitely. That one was more of a kind of dress for the job you want. Deal. Really wanted to spend a whole spring turkey hunting, so we documented it and then did a bunch of recipes.

[Stephen Rinella]

Good deal.

[Yanni]

Those are both available@theme eater.com.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Correct.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then what we're gonna. Jesse's been on the show a few times before. He recently got a. A Michelin star for Die Due A.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, but to be clear, a Michelin green star.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, I know. I'm saving that.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, sorry I ruined it. Can you, Bill, backtrack us a little bit? I just ruined it.

[Stephen Rinella]

I was toying with reading this. Mercer Long's Dai Due review. I'm just gonna read the first line. My quail plate was very good. Fantastic. Actually.

[Phil]

How many stars?

[Corinne]

Come on.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't want to do what's next.

[Yanni]

What episode number Guessed.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't want to do it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I gotta know. You know.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's the all dad meatballs. Very good.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Okay, building up a little more. This is gonna hurt. All right.

[Stephen Rinella]

The nil guy. Steak, Steak. He would have preferred the chimichurri on the side.

[Corinne]

He sounds like my kids.

[Yanni]

And that Mercer l was on episode 407, California's War.

[Stephen Rinella]

Would have been a great dish if they had just put it on the side.

[Phil]

Can we pause for a second? How does this make you feel right now?

[Stephen Rinella]

Across. Across the board? Very bold flavors. Never had a meal quite like it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

There you go.

[Corinne]

Oh, that's what I'm talking about.

[Stephen Rinella]

There's a little more in there. I'll share with you later.

[Jesse Griffiths]

We'll just kind of like a little ease it in there. Yeah. All right.

[Stephen Rinella]

Dude, it's my favorite. It's like, honest to God, man, Dai Due is my favorite restaurant.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, that's super kind of you.

[Stephen Rinella]

Thank you. Another thing I like about it, we've talked about this when you're on the show before, like, something that most restaurants would be like. It'd be, like in glowing neon signs and outside. But like, at the bottom of Jesse's. I don't know if he changed it. At the bottom of Jesse's menu, it says, everything is from around here.

[Jesse Griffiths]

From the author of the turkey book. Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

Just in little letters at the bottom of the menu. Everything is from around here. Meaning it's like all local stuff. Yeah, it's like all taxes.

[Jesse Griffiths]

We call that an economy of dialogue.

[Stephen Rinella]

Everything is from around here.

[Randall]

It's not sandwiched into the description of each dish.

[Jesse Griffiths]

We don't put farms in there. It's everything that everything is around here.

[Yanni]

Do you still have that slogan? Because I'm wearing the original shirt. It says, eat a hog, save the world.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, that's. That's more. Hashtag, you know, feral hog. Apologies. Apologist propaganda.

[Stephen Rinella]

We're gonna talk, Jesse, a bunch about food, cooking food.

[Phil]

Well, I want to know real quick how many Michelin star restaurants or Michelin green star restaurants serve things with, like, a ramekin of something on the side.

[Jesse Griffiths]

None of them.

[Stephen Rinella]

You just. You need to put that chimichurri in a squirt bottle and you set up the ketchup rack.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Maybe we could get it in a little packet. Then you could open.

[Stephen Rinella]

Plastic bag.

[Corinne]

What is a green star work?

[Stephen Rinella]

That's what the whole show is about, man.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, we're going to build up to that.

[Corinne]

I didn't read the. I didn't read the notes.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, it doesn't say that in the notes. Just lives in my head now. Now it's y. Now we're going to turn the heat to Yanni. After all that praise. Now we're going to criticize Yanni up and down.

[Randall]

You're on a little tear this morning.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, I got set there surprises.

[Corinne]

I should have read the notes.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, Yanni killed. Killed a sail just so he could.

[Corinne]

Get cool pictures to remove sailfish from the water in the US So I'll tell the story.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yanni went to like a little party. A party in Guatemala. Yeah, it wasn't like a 50th birthday party.

[Corinne]

Oh well, we went on a fishing trip to celebrate my brother in law's 50th birthday. We didn't do much partying.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay. Yanni went on a birthday fishing trip. While at this birthday fishing trip he committed a terrible sin which I didn't know. I didn't know about.

[Corinne]

I'd like to point out too that I did it. The, the captain and the mates were like we don't really do this but I'm like I really need the grip and grin, you know from the.

[Stephen Rinella]

Caught a sailfish for no reason then for no. Just a screw with it or as Mitch Hedberg said to make it late for something and lifts it out of the water and takes a picture. Then Brendan Rund, I can't remember was it Rundy or run? He was on the show. I think it's Rundy Rundy from the Nature Conservancy who was on episode 538 discussing a subject that now seems so incredibly dated, which was does wildlife win or lose with renewable energy? And he wrote in and saw Yanni's Instagram post and he, like many people do when they have a problem with something, reached out to Corinne in the US I didn't know this. It is now illegal to remove billfish from the water unless you're keeping them. They did a tattle a satellite tagging study on white marlin. If you. Oh if you leave a white marlin in the water when you catch it, the mortality rate. Now don't do that crap where you say a number that's going to make it. Phil knows what I'm talking about. Well you guys all you can see it. I can't do like a. Take a guess. Oh Jesse, take a guess and try to like work with me here. Don't, don't make it look bad. If you Catch a white marlin and leave it in the water. Catch and release. Fishing. You leave in the water and release it. What do you think the odds are he'll die?

[Jesse Griffiths]

1 in 10.

[Stephen Rinella]

Good. Good job. No, it's only 1.7. It's only. It's only 1.7%. Wow.

[Yanni]

10%, right?

[Stephen Rinella]

So you were off by a. What do you call that? Exponential? No. Factor of 10 off by a decimal point, Is that right?

[Randall]

I'm not sure.

[Yanni]

Is about. Yeah. 1.7.

[Randall]

I'm not a math.

[Stephen Rinella]

He thought 10 and 100.

[Corinne]

You're making this too complicated.

[Stephen Rinella]

He thought 10 and 100 die and.

[Randall]

Thought that was a good.

[Stephen Rinella]

And thought that was good. But it's only 1 and a half and 100 die if you leave them in the water. If you act like Yanni, guess what the odds he'll die is.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Am I taking another guess?

[Stephen Rinella]

Try to, you know.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Make it be that. It'll work in my favor.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Four out of ten.

[Stephen Rinella]

No. 33%. So close.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Yanni]

But even higher.

[Stephen Rinella]

So Yanni now has this. Lay in bed at night wondering that. That.

[Corinne]

But Yanni, you can think out of three.

[Randall]

You can flip it around and say, chances are he swam away and he's just fine.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know what's what? Here's what the odds are. It's like in. In paper, scissors, rock. There's a one in three, right?

[Yanni]

Scissors.

[Corinne]

Rock.

[Stephen Rinella]

So here's Yanni, I guess, Steve.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Rock.

[Yanni]

Paper, scissors.

[Phil]

Rock.

[Stephen Rinella]

Paper, scissors. So I'm saying, if you're throwing Michigan right, every time. If you're throwing it, you got a three choice.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Every time you throw, let's say, a scissor, that means Yanni killed a sailfish. So, rock. Nope. Paper. Nope. Scissor. Yep. Scissor. Yep. Rock. Nope.

[Corinne]

Unless you like scissors a lot and you throw it more often, then you kill more. Kill more sail.

[Stephen Rinella]

Do you feel bad about this, Giannis? Am I making you feel bad?

[Corinne]

It was an honest mistake. You know, had I known this prior to then, like I said, the. The mates and the cap, often, they don't do this. They do. They have, like, a GoPro on a stick. So you. You just get them next to the boat and it's. The GoPro shoots from way out in the water back towards the boat.

[Stephen Rinella]

Wasn't good enough for you.

[Corinne]

So out of the other 40, some fish that we caught, that's the way we took pictures of the few that we took pictures of. Most of the time, they don't even touch the fish. They just. They. They have a pole With a little. It's like. I don't know what. It's like a paper. Paper cutter. Oh, really? On the end, huh?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Discourager.

[Stephen Rinella]

Not a curlicue.

[Corinne]

No, no, no, no. It's literally a paper cutter. And it's just taped to the end of this pole. And they go, right, they go down the leader and just cut the line right above the hook and just don't even touch the hook and just let the hook rust out. They catch so many of those sailfish down there. Because we caught 40 in three days. It's nothing for them to catch 40 in a day. And they'll catch them with other hooks in the corner of their mouth, just like you would like a see a trout, you know, you can see the. Yeah, you know, it's been hooked and caught before.

[Stephen Rinella]

So they do it by. They're trolling. Explain the process of catching the stalefish.

[Corinne]

Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's. It's more in depth. It's more in depth and more sort of involved for the anglers than a lot of the trolling type fishing I've done in the past, where a lot of times you're just in a boat, the mates set up the rods, the baits are in there, you're trolling, the captain's running the boat, the fish bites a bait, it's pretty much on a mate, grabs the rod, makes sure it's. It's hooked, and then he hands it over to the angler. And you basically reel. You know, that's like your job. They don't take the boat out of gear to make it extra hard for you because you got to fight, like the current and the fish fighting. But here, with these sailfish out of, I don't know, the 10 lines that are in the water, there's actually only four hooks in there. Everything else is just a teaser, meaning it's just a decoy. Right. And so if you imagine these fish are hanging at the thermal climb, which is roughly 80ft. That's what it was when we were there. That's where they're hanging. And they're looking up to where to find their food. As they're cruising around, the boat comes over the top, there's all the prop wash and whatever. And then in that prop wash, behind the prop wash, there's all these. There's like a whole, you know, school of bait fish swimming is what it looks like. And there's all the smoke that's coming off of them. They call it smoke. It's the. The smaller wash coming off of these teasers, right? So they look up and go, oh, my God, that's what I've been looking for, you know? And they swim up the 80ft. And so when you're in the boat, you're sitting there and you're just watching all the teasers, and then all of a sudden, in one behind one teaser, Some of the teasers are like a group of baits. You see the bill all of a sudden, just above the water, swatting back and forth, Right? Because that's how they kill a flying fish or I don't know if it's sardines, whatever else they eat, but they whack them, stuns them. They turn and eat them, right? So at that point, the captain, usually, because he's up top in the bridge, so he can. He has a better angle to see it all.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

So he's. They give you a really good job of explaining how it's all going to go down. And, like, what. Most importantly, what right and what left is? Because just as, like, when you're guiding fly fishermen and you tell them to cast to the right, they cast to the left. And then you say, no, Jesse, the other right. So the same thing happens here because he goes right long teaser. And like, one of the anglers goes and grabs a rod on the left side of the boat, and he's like, no, the other right.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's like stage left and stage right where everybody gets confused.

[Randall]

Yeah, we had real problems with it that.

[Corinne]

So as soon as, like, as an angler, your job is to grab one of the baited rods, hopefully the rod where, you know, the bait is the closest to said teaser. So if it's the right long, you grab the rod that's got the bait in the right long position. You take it out of the downrigger clip. As soon as you have it in your hands, you take. You take it out of. You put it to free spool. Put your thumb on the. On the spool, and you're holding it. At that point, the. The mates are reeling all the teasers in, right? So the sailfish is in there amongst all these teasers. He's trying to swat and kill something to eat. And also they all disappear. And then the captain's like, hey, you're 10ft behind him. Reel up. So you flip it in gear, reel up like 10ft, and he goes, stop. Go back to free spool. And you're holding it. He's like, wait, wait, he's right behind it. And so the sailfish looks up and.

[Stephen Rinella]

Goes oh, hey, got one.

[Corinne]

There's the one. Whammo. And he eats it. And you feel like a slight tug on that rod is at that point, you take your thumb on that, lighten up on your drag, and let him eat it, and basically count to four. This is the fun part. I already told you this.

[Stephen Rinella]

Count quatro.

[Corinne]

Count quatro.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

You can do it in Spanish if you want. And then at that point, you flip the. You flip your drag. Engage your drag. He's on. You fight the fish. If you're going to do it on the fly, which is very popular down here, there's basically one extra step there. You have no baits in the water at all. It's all just teasers. There's no hooks. Right. So there's like a dozen teasers just going behind the boat.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Once the fish comes in behind it, you grab your fly rod, you have about 10 or 15ft of line in the water. It's like dragging behind the boat.

[Stephen Rinella]

So you're right, it's already dragging there. You.

[Corinne]

Well, you know, you. You dump it in, you get it ready. So it's. You're loading your rod by that drag behind the boat again, all the mates reel up all the. The teasers. They bring them in. The fish is still there, like, whoa, what's up? But they bring him in close because he's following those teasers in. So if you jumped off the stern, you could land on top of the sailfish. I mean, that's how.

[Stephen Rinella]

So you don't cast at them.

[Corinne]

No, no, you do. So you're holding it on one side, you've loaded your rod, and depending on if that sailfish comes in on the right or the left, you're gonna make one back cast and then shoot your line. They actually want you to cast behind him. So when the fish is like, oh, where'd everything go? And then all of a sudden, you start stripping, and that bait, you know, comes right by me, goes, ah, there he is.

[Stephen Rinella]

And is the captain still on the throttle?

[Corinne]

No. So to make it, like, legally caught by a fly rod, he can't be.

[Stephen Rinella]

In gear because you're trolling.

[Corinne]

Yeah. Because otherwise. Exactly. You're just trolling that fly. So basically, before you cast, he comes out of gear. You make one cast if it's. What was hard for me to remember was that if it was the left side of the boat, you had to cast and then run over to the left corner because you didn't want to strip your fly into the prop wash because the fish loses Sight of it because it's, you know, it's so white in there.

[Stephen Rinella]

Got it.

[Corinne]

And so you want to move over to the left side to keep your fly out in the clear water. But I don't know, I, I tugged it once or twice. He ate it and then you freeze just like you would when it, when he eats the bait. Right. And basically he takes all the slack out of your hands, it comes tight and then if you still have it, you know, mentally in you to remember, oh, he turned left, then you would sweep the rod to the right or vice versa, you know, to make sure you get that hook set. Because even the fly is circle hooks, right. So they really want to make sure you're, you can't set the hook. My brother in law missed quite a few fish because couldn't over, couldn't overcome.

[Stephen Rinella]

The instinct to set the hook.

[Corinne]

Yep. Yeah, everybody loves setting the hook, you know.

[Stephen Rinella]

Does it put up a good tussle on a fly rod?

[Corinne]

Yeah. You know, honestly, the tackle we were using even for the, the bait rods was pretty light. So both of them were pretty good. But what you learned pretty quickly is that as soon as he's on or she, they're going on a mad dash run. Amazing jumpers. And actually I found out that the less pressure you apply with a tackle, the more they stay towards the surface and the more jumping you get. If you hook them on super heavy duty stuff and just bear down on them, which you could, these fish don't really go over a hundred pounds much. Then they'll sort of sound on you and not really jump. So they actually keep the tackle a little bit lighter to keep them near the surface. So you get the exciting jumps and I mean we had multiple fish that jumped 20, excess of 20 times probably.

[Stephen Rinella]

What is the, what is the reputation of a sailfish? For food, for food quality. Again, they're not good.

[Corinne]

No, no, I think it is good. Yeah, I think it's just, I think it's just fine to eat. Yeah. But they're really trying to protect the resource there. What happens there a lot, even though it's completely illegal, even in these Guatemalan waters is we're fishing probably 30 miles off. But these pods of fish and they don't really know exactly the numbers, but it's got, it must be thousands because I mean there's a decent sized fleet there that might be catching, you know, 30, 40 fish a day per boat. But these pods of sailfish will move in closer to shore and once they get into that like 3, 4 mile mark the gill netters come out and hammer the out of them.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh.

[Corinne]

And so the fleet will be catching them at three miles for multiple days. But the word gets out and then all of a sudden one night of gill netting and the fleet goes out. They're like, hey, where's all the f fish? Well, they went home.

[Stephen Rinella]

No kid.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Phil]

Istio Forest, which is a great, great family name. Istio. Four a day for the, the sailfish. But yeah, super fast growing species. Can hit five feet in, in its first year.

[Stephen Rinella]

Really?

[Phil]

Yeah. So but like Yana said, you know, not super heavy. So I, they are considered over fished by and large. But it sounds like they're real fast growing. So like the ability to rebound the population would be damn real good.

[Stephen Rinella]

You guys catch any tuna, Yanni?

[Corinne]

Nope. That was definitely sort of a, it would have been a plus. Like, like it was a possibility. Tuna and dorado, but we saw neither of those as well as marlin. We did raise one marlin, meaning same thing. He came up off the, you know, thermocline and came into the teasers. But when I got, I was up in the bridge, happened to be up there and I got to see him and it literally looked like he came up there and then was like swimming alongside the teasers. Like hey guys, he wasn't in there. Like I'm gonna mess you up. He was in there for maybe 30 seconds and then just disappeared.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, that's cool.

[Corinne]

So yeah, it was all, all sailfish but yeah, one of the highlights, you know, the fishing was great but man, you just forget how good local food is. Like I haven't been to that many tropical places to eat pineapples where they you know, grow on trees and it's just like, it's nothing like a pineapple from the eat in the United States. Same thing with the mangoes, the avocados, you know they. What else? Papayas that we ate and you know they do a lot down there while we were talking about this is they season their fruit a lot. Yeah, a lot of salt on the fruit and then that thing called tahin. Yeah, tahin.

[Stephen Rinella]

My wife, my wife's been making that.

[Corinne]

Yeah, you were saying. But yeah, so great food, just very fresh. Everything down there is very kind of light and fresh. Didn't eat a lot of heavy stuff. So yeah, super fun trip. The Blue Bayou Sail Fishing lodge if you're interested.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, they, they're like dedicated to sail fishing.

[Corinne]

Oh yeah, yeah. Jennifer's my wife's cousin. Rob Orr is one of the captains at the Blue Bayou Sail Fishing lodge so you can go fish with Rob if you want.

[Phil]

He's gonna show your picture often. He's like, I. I pretty much guarantee you can't catch this one again, but.

[Stephen Rinella]

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[Corinne]

I only laid eyes on one other one that we caught out of Ochre, Coke, North Carolina, ones with Rob or too. But, yeah, I haven't. I haven't seen many of them.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, you know who we got. We got. We're working on. Coming on is some University of Wyoming Clovis experts. Here's what titillated me about it. What got me excited is we were down at University of Wyoming meeting with the archaeologists down there, looking at some collections. And these guys are very esteemed archaeologists, and they are still firm believers. Clovis first. Clovis were the first Americans, and they are big believers in the blitzkrieg hypothesis.

[Randall]

Overkill.

[Stephen Rinella]

They're big believers in the overkill hypothesis with mammoths. Meaning we always give. We always have Meltzer on.

[Yanni]

Do we need a stage of debate?

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, Meltzer likes him.

[Yanni]

Okay.

[Randall]

It's collegial.

[Yanni]

Well, that's collegiate.

[Phil]

But, you know, Steve will do his absolute best to create some sort of rival.

[Stephen Rinella]

He set it up. He set it up. I know you guys have. He. They're. They're like. They're respectful. They're respectful colleagues who, I gather, respectful colleagues who just disagree on a couple things.

[Yanni]

Love it.

[Phil]

World could use more of that.

[Stephen Rinella]

And so he's going to. He's coming on and they're going to. We're working on getting them on, and they're going to come on and lay out the case. And it's good. I don't want to, like. I don't want to give my. I don't want to do my own version. That's not that good. They're going to lay out the case that, like, Clovis first.

[Randall]

Yeah. We got to.

[Stephen Rinella]

Mammoth hunters.

[Randall]

We got to see a mammoth skull that's being pieced back together. We got to see some giant mammoth tusks that you keep, like, lowering down to look further back on the shelf because they just keep going, like, just giant tusks. And Steve got to live out one of his wildest fantasies and see someone doing archaeological drawings in person. Like a guy looking at a Clovis point, which is my favorite art, sketching it in fine, fine detail.

[Stephen Rinella]

He's gonna hook. I'm gonna get. I'm gonna get an original from him, and I'm gonna frame it, put in the studio. That's cool. What else happened down there? I walk into this office and there's this giant bone laying there. I said, damn, what's that? Off. He said, that's a rock. And I said, I thought it was a dinosaur bone. He said, so is the guy that brought it here? He said, you can have it. The guy brought it, didn't take it. Didn't you take it home with him? Dude, it looks. It looks like. It looks like.

[Randall]

Looks like the head of a big.

[Stephen Rinella]

It looks like a chunk of a femur in the. The end of the femur. Yeah, like 100. 100.

[Yanni]

You guys should have brought that back.

[Stephen Rinella]

I know. I don't know why I was.

[Randall]

Our bags are already getting heavier because we got some beautiful books from them too.

[Yanni]

Speaking of bags.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, yeah. Well, let me do one more thing, then I'll talk about that bag.

[Randall]

It would not have fit in that bag. It was a big rock.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm gonna talk about that bag. But I want to do one more thing because Randall. I've been spending a lot of time with Randall driving around. And Randall's been telling me about just the world. I wasn't aware of that he's involved in.

[Randall]

What's that?

[Stephen Rinella]

Estate sales.

[Randall]

Oh, yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Randall waits for old men to die.

[Randall]

Well, they're dying anyway.

[Yanni]

I didn't really know this either.

[Stephen Rinella]

No. Randall waits. I think that I was telling Randall, if he wants to get serious about this, that he would start finding garages that had a lot of interesting stuff and then check on the well being of the.

[Phil]

Tell us some depressing stories.

[Stephen Rinella]

Be like, how is Bob feeling? You know?

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Couldn't help but notice the garage.

[Randall]

Well, when you drive. When you drive past like a ranch and you see it's just there's shit everywhere. And you're like, man, how does a guy get all that stuff? It's by buying that stuff when that guy leaves this earth.

[Stephen Rinella]

So Randall goes on estate sales. And when he was looking, I was watching him. He was showing me an estate sale and he was looking at things that would. Because I have like bad organizational problems. Like, I like things real organized and you can buy like. Like buckets. Buckets of assorted sockets.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Yanni]

Oh, that was like when you like went and bought like a bucket of assorted files.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yes.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay.

[Yanni]

Have one of those.

[Stephen Rinella]

My Randall is like an active estate. He like, him and his friends look at estate sales.

[Yanni]

Didn't know this.

[Randall]

Great tools, all kinds of tools. I mean, I'm a Craigslist guy too. I'm an ebay guy to some extent. But you remember I had that. There was this amazing one in Livingston recently. And the guy had just an unbelievable collection of taxidermy, like Multiple full body bear mounts and buffalo mounts, like shoulder mounts. I think I probably sent you a dozen things from that that all got.

[Stephen Rinella]

The real collectors caught wind of that.

[Randall]

Yeah, the real collectors caught wind of that. But yeah, this guy in Livingston had an unbelievable tax Dermot.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh.

[Corinne]

So those things actually brought some money because I thought after we had our podcast with Hayes, he explained that those things really didn't have much value.

[Randall]

Oh, the. I got priced out of the. I mean well, you got to know your budget is right. I had, I think I had. Sydney was all in on a couple of them up to like 5, $600.

[Corinne]

What mounts did you want to have of someone else's?

[Randall]

I don't know. It was just. They're like full body goat. There were multiple full body goats. There were like crazy rams.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. At the right price. I. I don't know somewhere to put it.

[Randall]

They're amazing antelope. Like dozens and dozens of antelope in this collection. Yeah.

[Corinne]

And how much were you willing to spend?

[Randall]

Like a couple hundred bucks. Not. Not enough. But the.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, the Stacy he was showing me was rock bottom prices. Yeah.

[Randall]

But there's still like nine days left on it.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh yeah. And way he worked is they got a body. He. So he's got a body in a certain town. An estate sale comes up in that town. The body's like hey, let me know and I'll go pick up what you need. So then you're kind of praying on these families, you know. No, no, you're preying on these families in a time, in a time of grief and need.

[Randall]

No, I don't, I don't think you're preying on them at all. They want to sell it.

[Phil]

Making life easy.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Like.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil]

I mean honestly like with my uncle Rancher was, was passing away his truck doors were. You know, because you're always like driving around fixing stuff and then you're, you're ending up with things that you're not going to leave out in the field. So you'd. He would throw them in his truck. All the big organizational slots in the, in the truck doors.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Which Dirt uses for his shampoo and toothpaste and stuff like that.

[Corinne]

Exactly.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, so it's this medicine cabinet.

[Randall]

I have corn dog sticks in there. Those little Jeffs.

[Phil]

Jeff's were full to the top with like nuts and bolts and I mean more packed than, than like a hardware store shelf. Right. Full to the top with nuts and bolts and sockets and stuff like that. And what we ended up doing, cuz his shop Was kind of like that, too. So instead of doing, like, the estate sale route of like, who wants to bid on this coffee can, this Folgers coffee can from 1970 full of assort.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil]

Drivers and stuff. We just called Pacific Steel the recycler. Right. Oh, and I had a dumpster delivered and then filled it full of all that stuff as recycling instead of taking the time to go through and sort it all.

[Stephen Rinella]

Got it.

[Phil]

That's the way to do it.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Or hopefully Doug Duran's listening.

[Phil]

Yeah, well, hopefully Randall wasn't calling him ahead of time and being like, yeah, you're getting old. I bet all your friends are dead. Huh? That's got to be depressing.

[Randall]

Anyway, I also think, like, Craigslist, when you see somebody who's like, they're like a tradesman and they're. They're getting out of the business, you know? Do you buy, like, storage units, full ladders and stuff like that?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Tell the story. You told me the. The totally depressing story. You're talking about an estate sale. The death.

[Randall]

I think we could tell this one.

[Phil]

You had to wrench something out of some grieving widow pants.

[Randall]

No, this is actually be like, I. I mean, it could have happened. It could have happened anywhere. But, yeah, my buddy, his. I believe his grandfather, when he passed, they had an estate sale at the house, and they're upstairs and they. They hear a gunshot in the basement, and a guy had gone to use the bathroom and had a. Had a handgun in his belt, went off and killed him in, like, in the middle of the estate sale. So sort of a dark story.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Nothing really related to estate sales.

[Randall]

Yeah, I know.

[Phil]

It's kind of misleading.

[Corinne]

He wasn't trying to steal the.

[Randall]

No, no, no. He brought it with him.

[Phil]

Is there something.

[Jesse Griffiths]

But it made.

[Randall]

It made this whole experience, like, especially traumatic.

[Phil]

Oh, the state sale law. That's like. Well, if you die at an estate sale, during the estate sale, you become part of this.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't know why I wanted him to tell that.

[Yanni]

Terrible.

[Randall]

I know.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's just kind of. Really. Kind of ruined the show. But as he was telling me, I thought it was going to be. I had him tell it because I made the same mistake I made when he started telling it. I thought it was going to be someone fiddling with a gun for sale at an estate sale. And then he gets done with the story, and I realized there's nothing to do with estate sales. And here he is telling it the damn podcast.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Who asked him to do that?

[Randall]

Of my Own volition. I mean, I will say like estate sales, if you want to find a bunch of old like reloading presses and stuff like that. Like I missed the golden ages of just stocking up on, on brass and all these components. And you know, reloading hand loading has gotten a lot more expensive. So there's a lot of guys with just closets full of this stuff.

[Phil]

Yeah. It's basically planning on your own estate sale down the line.

[Randall]

That's one way to look at it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Phil]

Gotta stock up.

[Corinne]

Yeah. All you kids that are 15 to 25 years old right now, make a note that in 2072ish, you're gonna want to check, call up Randall's wife, see how Randall's 2072.

[Randall]

That I'm getting there. Yes.

[Corinne]

Not gonna get that far. I didn't want to say you're gonna die young.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Huh?

[Randall]

That would make me 2072. That'd make me like 80 something, right?

[Stephen Rinella]

Someone asked me what I'm holding in my hand.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Good lord. What is that?

[Randall]

What is that, steam?

[Stephen Rinella]

The FHF EDC packs are out. All American made backpack made out of, they call it challenge sailcloth. Waterproof. I've been. Paul's been making these and I've been getting to wear all the different ones he's come out with. It's got all kinds of inserts for them. They're sweet.

[Phil]

What, what's your big finding on. On the finished product here?

[Stephen Rinella]

Love it.

[Yanni]

What's in the pack?

[Stephen Rinella]

No, this is my, like, this is my travel bag. This is, this is literally my EDC bags. I keep my laptop and everything in here. I got it all figured out. Cords. I keep my cords here.

[Randall]

Oh, that's a good spot.

[Stephen Rinella]

Keep my spectacles and my shades in this side pouch. You really need to know all this?

[Yanni]

Yeah. Up here I keep durable.

[Stephen Rinella]

Up here I keep pens and whatnot. That's where I keep that stuff.

[Yanni]

Holster in there.

[Randall]

You've got.

[Stephen Rinella]

He's got an insert. So you can put like, you can put your pistols and whatnot in there. I keep my laptop in here. Well, it's actually right here, right now. And I got one of these document bags.

[Phil]

When it's super full of stuff, is it comfortable to like hustle through the airport with?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, dude, I love it. Yeah, I will say it's like the kind of thing that you can kick like I just cram it under my seat in front of me on the airplane.

[Randall]

You don't have to worry about it.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, it's ergonomic. It's a sweet pack.

[Yanni]

And it's very stuff to the outside.

[Stephen Rinella]

Ergonomic.

[Yanni]

What's that?

[Stephen Rinella]

Not ergo. Like therefore economic.

[Randall]

It's got. It's got a Molle panel on the back so you can add another little pouch.

[Stephen Rinella]

I put pouches on there now and then, but in the end I went for just a total streamlined thing because you. You can just kind of move around like a grease high speed. Yeah. It's just like. You feel like a greased hog wearing this thing.

[Randall]

We've been traveling a lot and you haven't. You haven't had to look for things. You haven't been losing things in our travels.

[Stephen Rinella]

No. Cuz I got my system totally dialed in and. And like I said, man, it's hard to find a completely. Like I said, us made. I love it.

[Yanni]

The. The challenge sale material is that. That's like actual.

[Stephen Rinella]

You can't mess it up sale.

[Yanni]

Like.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, it's just a thing they call. It's a thing they call it, but you can't mess it up. You can't mess it up. At least I haven't been able to.

[Phil]

I mean, you probably could sail with it. Yes.

[Yanni]

Right?

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Sail through the airport in a real.

[Yanni]

And that's available at the fhf.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, they're sweet backpacks. Yeah. And I'm kind of like a little finicky about backpacks.

[Phil]

What?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, it's one of the areas where I get a little finicky about stuff.

[Randall]

One of the areas.

[Stephen Rinella]

There's a handful of areas that I'm very finnick. Duffel bags, backpacks that I'm like. I'm like. I have big opinions about those things.

[Phil]

You know, it's very rarely where I'm like, you know, Steve would have no opinion.

[Stephen Rinella]

There's certain. I was telling Randall, though, there's certain things where I had to walk away. Like I have. I vowed to. I will not. I no longer will argue with anybody about anything to do with calibers. Don't do it or I quit for a while. I quit arguing about gear. I just wanted.

[Randall]

You're dipping your toe back in.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

He found a new group of crew members that are more. You know, their mindset is more akin to his mindset about gear. And so it's the arguing more favorable echo chamber.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yanni once observed it. Yeah. I observed one time that he's like, Steve always has a different headlamp, but somehow he always has the best headlamp. It's just because he has it. It was therefore being the best. All right, Jesse. What the hell is a green Michelin star, man? What's a Michelin star?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, let's talk about that first.

[Stephen Rinella]

And what's a Michelin tire?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, so. So the Michelin company who, you know, owned vast rubber plantations in Southeast Asia.

[Stephen Rinella]

Do they.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, yeah. And they made tires. And so they started making a travel guide many, many years ago, and they would rate restaurants, mostly in France. And to get one, two, or three Michelin stars was very big deal. And it had to encourage people to.

[Stephen Rinella]

Drive around and wear out their tires.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yes, exactly. And so you could get one, two, or three stars. And it was for the. For a very long time. It was based on, you know, you had to have very fine cutlery, service standards, glassware consistency. It had to be like, for three Michelin stars was. Was unattainable. You know, it's like, you know, very few restaurants in the world had them one star. You know, incredible honor right there. And a few years back, they started kind of changing it up, you know, like where a Michelin star could maybe just mean it was just an exemplary restaurant. And then famously, I think two or three years ago, they gave a taqueria in. In Mexico City a Michelin star. Just a place on the street. Like, no. No servers, no nothing. It was just, you know, just these very simple tacos, and they got a Michelin star. And that kind of shifted that whole kind of narrative as to far as what. What it meant.

[Corinne]

It was probably a little bit of a rebranding for the Michelin brand themselves, I'm guessing.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Right?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, just move away from white tablecloths and French, French high cuisine.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Right?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I mean, in a way, it was just like, a little confusing, though, because you still have restaurants shooting for three stars, but I think they still saved the three stars for that white tablecloth experience. And then a couple years ago, they came out with the. The green star, which is what we got, which is a sustainability star. And it's all about sourcing, direct purchasing, ethical processes, even, like, employee programs, things like that. And so due to our. The way that we source almost everything, I guess we were considered for it. We don't. You don't get nominated. You don't put in for it or anything. An inspector comes along, you don't know.

[Stephen Rinella]

Who they are, right?

[Jesse Griffiths]

No.

[Randall]

The food's still probably got to be pretty good, though, right?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like you could be making hot dogs off roadkill deer. That doesn't mean.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is a component of it that they. They list as one of the tenets of it is. And we also got a Bib Gourmand, which is means you make the guide. We didn't get a Michelin star, but we made the Bib Gourmand, which is means we're a recommended Michelin restaurant and then also a green star. And at last count, I think, I think There was about 32 restaurants in the United States with green stars.

[Phil]

Wow.

[Stephen Rinella]

I've seen some headlines recently. I want to dive into just a little bit about Michelin stars and what it means for restaurants. I would think it's like all positive. Right. But I feel like I keep seeing headlines. There should be a word for when you just read the headlight. Like I used to say I was reading a thing. Yeah. But then now it's like, in all honesty, I didn't, I don't want a.

[Randall]

Follow up question about this.

[Stephen Rinella]

I've seen like headlines alluding to the idea that it's not all like, that there's negatives to a Michelin star for a restaurant. Sure, but how, like what?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Well, I mean, in all honesty and with regards to all the restaurants that they got Michelin stars and in Austin, I think I'll say three or four of them were barbecue places that got the star.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I, you know, and I feel that it's a wonderful thing for them. Personally. I, you know, having been in the industry for so long and having kind of this maybe antiquated idea of what a Michelin star meant, really didn't want one in the way that like, I never felt like our restaurant was a, in the classic sense, a Michelin starred restaurant. And also you, you will start to have to deal with a good deal of scrutiny. And these days that scrutiny is, can be, you know, just, it's pretty mean. Sometimes you wonder if it's worth it. And you will see stories because if.

[Stephen Rinella]

You'Re on top, if you're on top, people just try to knock you off the top.

[Randall]

Or.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Right. It's, I mean the irony of stuff like that is like, well, we don't think you deserve a Michelin star. And then you have to be like, well, we didn't ask for it. Somebody else said that. Or you know, if you get like a, you know, top 10 restaurants or something like that, you know, be like, yeah, but you don't deserve that. Well, we also didn't make that call. You know, somebody else said that. Now you're, now you're kind of coming at us. I mean, maybe I'm too sensitive to be a restaurant owner. Maybe, maybe it's probably not even the right word for it, but there is a good deal of scrutiny.

[Stephen Rinella]

There's.

[Phil]

There's probably some turnover that. That, like, employee turnover that could come with it too, because, like, oh. Oh, my gosh, I just got a Michigan Star at the restaurant that I work with.

[Stephen Rinella]

Michigan Star?

[Phil]

Michigan Star.

[Randall]

It's a very different system.

[Phil]

That's our system coming forward that we should do that for every time we're on the road.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Michigan hello.

[Phil]

Michelin Michigan Star.

[Randall]

It's like a Michigan hello.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's the simple one and a half.

[Randall]

You get two of them.

[Jesse Griffiths]

But.

[Randall]

Right.

[Phil]

Like, you could have some employees be like, oh, Hol, this is a great thing for the resume.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. Maybe hop around a little bit more, just, you know. Yeah, that's. That's, you know, kind of punch. Punch that card a little bit, you know. Oh. I worked at a Michelin starred restaurant. Sure. Definitely could happen. I think that, you know, in our case, this green star, when I. I knew that we were in a contender for that from the questions that they started to ask me, like, we were getting these emails and I was like, talk about your sourcing project practices.

[Stephen Rinella]

Who sends you the emails?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Michelin. So when you're dead.

[Stephen Rinella]

Giveaway.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. Yeah. Then I was very, very happy because I think that if there. If I had to pick one of those two things, I would absolutely take the green star, because that is the goal that we've worked to since day one was just like, having really equitable, fair, good food purchased from our neighbors, like, high quality local stuff, and just really sticking to those guns, you know, wine, beer, everything. So the Michelin, the green star was really the one that I thought was like, yeah, that's actually, that is. That is a recognition that. That we will definitely take.

[Stephen Rinella]

What happens when someone. I don't want to harp on the negative, but why do you hear stories of people. Aren't there stories of people turning them in?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yes. Marco Pierre White, very famous chef.

[Stephen Rinella]

Not the green star.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Not the green star. Yeah. Sometimes they'll get, you know, mad. This is probably the old days, you know, back in France.

[Stephen Rinella]

So he was like a white tablecloth guy.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Certainly. He famously made Gordon Ramsay cry. Whoa. Yeah. Like, he. But what about not being a good cook? Marco Pierre White is like the.

[Randall]

Well, that's sort of. I mean, what goes around comes around, right?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. Gordon Ramsay was very young at the time.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

This kind of speaks to this whole thing. Like, these guys are the ones that are working 120 hours a week. Just like excellence. Just the screaming, the throwing of the bands, just the, the kind of nightmarish old kitchen situation that we think of.

[Stephen Rinella]

Got it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

And then, you know, if they go from like three stars to two stars, then maybe they just take those two stars and throw them back at Michelin or something. I'm making that story up. But, you know, it would be, it would be a spite kind of deal. And stars were, I mean, in some circles, probably still are highly, highly sought after. And it's like, I mean, a life goals, you know, they want one star, two stars, three stars, you know, and. But I, you know, we're not really playing that game.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Me, how I became aware of it is my wife and I were eating dinner with Jesse in Dai Due and I said, well, how's business been? And he said, it's been great. Because of the green Michelin star.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yep. I mean, definitely it. We saw a huge influx of people.

[Stephen Rinella]

From that, so people cared about it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, Austin or Texas, you have to submit to Michelin to be inspected and you have to give them a whole bunch of money, like millions and millions of dollars to come in and do the inspections. And once they do that, they come in and they inspect it. Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio. And then from there they're going to start making. For the first time ever. Because. No, no. But no restaurant in Texas ever had a star. And they came in and the guide came to Texas. And so you'll have, I think it's, you know, some sort of Texas hospitality or.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Phil]

State tourism.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. It's like kind of, yes, please come do this thing. And so. And then it brought in. They brought in the inspectors and then a bunch of restaurants in Texas were granted stars. A couple, two, I think just two green stars in Texas and, and then a bunch of stars for restaurants in San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Dallas, and. And really boosted all of that. I mean, it was huge in the restaurant business. It was talk of the town for a little while.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know what you said to us when we were eating dinner that I still don't fully understand. You mentioned feeling weird or. I can't remember how you put it, feeling self conscious or weird or whatever. Eating in your own restaurant.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. I like it. I like that place a lot. And I mean, it's more. I like the Price is Right too, but. Yeah, sometimes, you know, just sitting there and feel like I should be working, but.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, so that. Okay, that's what, that's what it is. Yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I don't work night.

[Stephen Rinella]

You look like you're Slacking.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, yeah. I hung up my night night shift spurs a while back.

[Stephen Rinella]

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[Phil]

But you know like when we, when we went down there and interviewed Teddy Nuggets, we all went and, and ate with Jesse at Dai Dewey. And I do remember Jesse was an awesome host but he was like looking around at everything as much as hanging out with us at the table.

[Stephen Rinella]

Right.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Keep an eye on it.

[Phil]

It's a hard, hard thing to do.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, it is.

[Phil]

Would you. Because you said like your employee programs are part of your, your Green Star and your Jesse came up with employee challenges as part of their employee programs because, you know, like it's a high stress environment.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil]

And you were telling me about one last night. That was, I thought, fantastic.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, I can guess which one.

[Phil]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Well, every. Well, I try to do it every month. Sometimes I can slack a little bit, but I. We try to give all of the back of the house employees, everybody in the kitchen, we give them something that could be a gift card. It could be an oyster knife. It could be. It's something. It could be a steak. And from that they need to deliver back almost like an essay about that. And we will. It'll be very clearly defined. Like the first one we ever did, we made everybody go to a specific taco trailer and order the tacos there. And then I wanted them to report back on how the onions and the cilantro were cut, because it's very, very important because they're cut with Michelin star precision. Like, beautiful, always super consistent and just like. And you're. You're eating.

[Stephen Rinella]

I wish we had some. Is there any cilantro in the kitchen?

[Yanni]

I don't think so. Do you want some now?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to cut the. Up.

[Jesse Griffiths]

The stuff is finely chopped with a knife. Well, that was there. Report back on the importance.

[Stephen Rinella]

Back up, back up. Stems or no stems?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Stems all but cilantro. Absolutely. Stems.

[Stephen Rinella]

Hmm. Okay, go.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, stems are good.

[Stephen Rinella]

You can't. You can't start at one end and go to the other end. Kind of bunch up with your hand.

[Jesse Griffiths]

We're really digressing, but I've been here before. The stems on cilantro can be used as an aromatic, like onion or garlic, too. You can. You can cook those like. Like put those in the beginning, like with your carrots and stuff, and they'll add a little bit of cilantro, but a nice, beautiful cooked note. But also, like, when you're chopping cilantro, stems are fine.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay, so you wanted to report on this.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, that was. That's an example. And then another would be the. You know, we're. We're facing a big shift in how oysters are gathered in the. On the coast. And so you have farmed oysters and you have dredged oysters, and we're trying to support the farmed mariculture of oysters.

[Stephen Rinella]

Boy, did I get a year full about this from the oyster dredgers.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Buckle up. So, but. But we had one of the oyster farmers come in, bring a bunch of oysters. We popped a bunch of sparkling wine for the staff, and everybody sat there and ate oysters. And she gave a presentation on oysters. So we learned a little bit about oysters. So every time I'm just trying to pick a topic, we, we really want them to connect with. I mean, we're a very meat heavy restaurant. We really want them to connect with what that means. And so we had, we took all the back of the house staff out to a farm and everybody killed a chicken and we, you know, funneled all the blood from the chicken into breadcrumbs and herbs. And then we pan fried that, everybody ate it, we stewed a bunch of chicken and then everybody took their chicken home. And so then they had to kind of, you know, report back and I'll give them a list of questions, you know, like, how was that? You know, some people were bawling, some people were just like, you know, no problem. And then they have to kind of report back on that.

[Stephen Rinella]

I feel like you could get yourself in a mild little bit of hot water with that routine.

[Phil]

Oh, I love it though. I mean it's.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. How so?

[Stephen Rinella]

Picture down the road, there's a headline and it says, Texas restaurant Man makes employees kill chickens.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

You follow me?

[Jesse Griffiths]

It's the first sign of like being a serial killer, right? Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And people see that Texas and that's all they needed to hear.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yep.

[Corinne]

Why only back at the house, the.

[Randall]

People that just read headlines would have a problem.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. I'd be like, yeah, that's as far as I'd get.

[Jesse Griffiths]

That's a good question. Mostly because I feel that they, they don't earn as much and they are also there. And I always have this two way street principle with, with, I mean, everybody that works there. But like, you know, you work really hard for us. We educate you and give you as much knowledge as we possibly can. Like there's no secrets, you know, any recipe, any technique, anything that anybody at that restaurant knows should be always shared. And so we try to add value to the back of the house experience through that, through this program specifically. And so we have about 14 people in the back of the house. They all participate and they always do. It's great. There's, there's, it's really fun.

[Corinne]

So is that not changing at all? Because, you know, I did a few years in the restaurant industry.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's what I call long Tong, Yanni and Tuscanini's. Yes.

[Corinne]

When that light bulb goes off and you're like, wait a minute, how much did you make tonight? And then you look at your paycheck and you know, it could be half or a third of your, you know, like a two week paycheck and they. They cleared it in one night in cash tips. It's like, very hard to stay in the back of the house. And I've always thought that, you know, someone would be working on. And I think at some places they do even pool tips with the back of the house, right? Oh, you do that as well.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

But even then, it still, it doesn't bring up parity.

[Jesse Griffiths]

There's a clear disparity. But that is, again, why we introduced that our back of the house managers, every month they get a cookbook. So if you've worked there for three years, you've got 40 cookbooks. Anyone you want pick out a cookbook, you get it. And then we do this. You know, there's pretty good health benefits, mental health benefits, things like that. Just trying to add value to the back of the house experience because it's a hard job and it doesn't pay as well as front of the house. And so just being able to add stuff like this is, you know, a effective benefit that we can extend to them.

[Phil]

So, I'm sorry, the chicken deal, we didn't get to get to this last night, but, like, you had people go home, roast their chicken, and then report back on that.

[Jesse Griffiths]

That was the next month. So. Yeah, so after they killed the chicken, you know, they reported on how that whole thing went down with them, you know, and then reflecting on that, you know, because we deal with lots and lots of dead animals coming through the restaurant, you know, just. And you got to see, well, 14 of them die. You got to do one yourself. You know, hopefully that sticks. You know, it helps with waste and things like that. You're not going to be like, yeah, whatever. This quail I drop, you know, dropped it. Of course it's going to trash, but. But, you know, like, just have that.

[Phil]

Well, it wouldn't go in the trash at my house.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Just the respect that. That. That we're really trying to instill on them. And then the next month, yes, they roast the chicken. And then since there's, you know, a million different ways, all we said was just roasted however you want and report back on how you roast it. So we get into kind of technique, and everybody just compare notes on that and just make it kind of a fun interactive thing where everybody's just exchanging information, and it's all done through a chat. So it's like you're submitting a written essay.

[Stephen Rinella]

I got it. You know what? This won't matter to anyone but me. But you're combining two. You're probably talking about Chickens killing chickens and collecting the blood and all that. That's colliding with a different thing that's in my head right now, which is I'm reading a new book about.

[Phil]

I think we can all agree that's never happened to me.

[Stephen Rinella]

Happens to me a fair bit. I'm reading a book about the battle of Manila. The Oxford University Press just put out a book about the battle of Manila in the Philippines, World War II.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Okay, MacArthur? Yeah, okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't want to give the end away.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Did he return?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, he returned. But my God, man. Like, the Japanese knew they couldn't win. And I'm getting to the chickens in a minute. The Japanese knew they couldn't win. They killed 100,000 civilians in Manila just as like a departing gift. Anyhow, years ago, I was in the Philippines and went to cockfights, which is probably of the days I've spent in my life. One of the most influential days I've ever had in my life was being at the cockfights where they, you know, they lash the blades on those chickens. It's hard to follow the action because the chickens fight fast is great, but the thing that struck me is they got a big kettle of boiling water, and they got a big funnel. All these cocks. I'm sure this has not happened in a lot of more affluent places. This is down way in the south of the Philippines, just north of Mindanao. But they. When the cock fights go on, as soon as your cock gets killed, you go. And it's like a little assembly line. You make soup, they drain the blood into the funnel. It's collected in the bucket. They got the boiling water. You plunge your deal, pluck your rooster, and everybody that's leaving is leaving with plucked. Everybody that's leaving is leaving with plucked roosters. And I imagine a lot of those don't. A lot of those fighting don't wind up in a cook bit pot.

[Corinne]

Why not?

[Stephen Rinella]

Because people just aren't gonna. People don't want roosters probably.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I don't know. They eat bulls after bull fights.

[Corinne]

Well, hold on. If they're gonna go through that, and that's as much if that. If it's that much of a process, they're not being forced to pluck their birds, are they?

[Jesse Griffiths]

They have to be eating them.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, no, no.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Probably energetic to eat them. Level two.

[Corinne]

No, I know, but you're saying they. They're not getting eaten.

[Stephen Rinella]

I bet you I'm. I'm not. Like, I wanted to get into. I wanted to get into going to more cockfights I used to use. I used to hang out this Dominican dude and. And he would go back to Dominican Republic just to go to fights. And I was going to go, but my wife was pregnant. She thought it was inexcusable that I was going to fights. Well, anyways, I didn't go. I've only been to one fight. But what I'm saying is we start.

[Yanni]

That trend, cockfights and roller pigeon derbys.

[Stephen Rinella]

There, you can't do them here. But Burkhardt, you know the writer Burkard Bilger, you ever hear him? He's the guy. You know how like, noodling for Flatheads became a huge thing? Picard Bilger like made that. He had a book, Noodling for Flatheads. It was about like Southern tradition. He wrote a piece, a big piece about cockfighting the back, like illicit underground fighting in. In the US Anyhow, have you read.

[Randall]

Clifford Geertz's the Balinese Cockfight?

[Stephen Rinella]

No.

[Randall]

It's a classic anthropological study where he goes to. He goes to Bali and he, he. It's just this deep analysis of how you can explain all of these, like all of Balinese society by the way that the cockfight unfolds and how people behave around there.

[Stephen Rinella]

Maybe I'll read that.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Randall]

I didn't know you were such an aficionado.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm not. I went to. I went to. I spent a day at the cockpit fights. It was one of the most influential days of my life. And I'm just. I just thought, I guessed. I don't know, maybe a big cockfighter can write in and tell me. I bet you you could go to a lot of cockfights and not see the cocks handled as a culinary item with quite the level of precision that one sees in the Philippines.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Oh, I see.

[Stephen Rinella]

I see. So I'm trying to get to. They're even collecting the blood, which Jesse was just talking about.

[Randall]

Gotcha.

[Phil]

Jesse, you will get in trouble if you do Monthly Challenge and it's fighting.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yes.

[Phil]

I think.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil]

Since you're restaurant based. The Killing of a chicken.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Yeah. It's funny that you bring up fights because we were just hanging. When we hung with Heffelfinger in Arizona, we talked about cockfighting and he was like the hip hop hypocrisy, you know, of saying that you can't do that here. But then to go and buy a chicken breast and to know how that chicken in the environment that it lived in and what it was subjected to versus the life that a fighting lives like if you, if you had pet chickens, you would always choose to have your, your chicken live the life of a, of a fighting versus one that's grown in, you know, American poultry breeding farm.

[Stephen Rinella]

I just had my. Yeah, I just had my first little bit of like teenage idealism spring up in one of my kids who's 14, short lived. He got. No, he got to watching. He got to watching animal rights videos that are real, that hack on industrial farming. And he declared he's only going to eat wild meat. No more fast food. And he was showing me a video where it was like a conveyor belt at a chicken producing facility. It's a conveyor belt full of eggs and chicks that goes into a grinder and it's just unwanted. It just like never ends. Just a conveyor belt, little yellow chicks and eggs and just whatever into this grinder.

[Jesse Griffiths]

10 million chickens a day.

[Stephen Rinella]

And he's like, man, and this is just like the unwanted little chicken babies. And he said he like vowed up and down he's never gonna ever eat anything but wild meat. And I'm like, welcome to, welcome to being a teenager. You'll find these things get harder and harder to stay true to the older you get.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I mean that was, the whole point of that exercise is like this happens 10 million times every day. You just did it once and it was kind of profound. So definitely worth a second look.

[Stephen Rinella]

Walk through. Just so people get a sense of how you guys run stuff at your restaurant. Pick a thing like how you guys do your own beef tallow or how you guys do. What were you talking about the other day? What you guys doing? You get a bunch of blueberries. Just something like that.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh yeah.

[Phil]

And your fermentation. Like you guys have months long. Months long prep processes.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Sure.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Because I was with, I was with you one time and you were all hopped up. We were down at. We were down in South Texas and you were all worked up about buying every piece of citrus.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

You could find. At every pecan you could find.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, I, I just feeling a van full. Yeah, I just. But that. That place that you and I went to closed. And so we have to go even farther south now.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

And so we just, we. It wasn't that much farther. We drove, we drove further down that highway and finally found a citrus sand and I rolled in there and we bought I think 12 cases of lemons. And it's the first time we'd had lemons in months and then brought them back and everybody's joyous and happy about it.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

So pick anything. Like, what I'm trying to. What I want you to do is explain an example of. Because in. In Dai Dua, everything is from around here. So you're. You. There's a season, there's seasonality.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's not as severe as the north, but there's still seasonality in Texas.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

So pick an example of something where. What you. What you need to do. Because you can't just buy lemons whenever you want, right?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. I mean, lemons are always a really good example, I think, you know, because, like, something as simple as iced tea, also tea, you know, so we use Yaupon holly, which is the only plant that naturally contains caffeine in North America, and it grows as a. Like a invasive understory in East Texas. And so we get Yaupon holly leaves and make tea out of that.

[Stephen Rinella]

How do you get those?

[Jesse Griffiths]

There's. There's actually a couple producers that make it. They're out there harvesting it, and then they do the whole drying process and then supply tea, which is really cool that they're making that product out of. Out of this. This. I mean, it's everywhere else.

[Stephen Rinella]

So your tea is from Texas?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know, I could see the campaign. Like, we put the tea back in Texas.

[Jesse Griffiths]

It's pretty. Pretty solid. And so. But most of the year, if you get iced tea and you say, hey, can I have a lemon with that? We're like, sorry, you know, and we have to give that. We don't say sorry. We. We spend it in this, like, more educational direction of, like, oh, well, we. We only source things from here. So sometimes in October, you know, barring a hard freeze the previous February, we will see some lemons. And, you know, for a brief window of time, if you wanted a lemon with your iced tea, we had it. But we go through, like, we just recently had a. Our. Our pork producer, our domestic pork producer went through a. He. He just ran out of product, you know, and he's like, listen, I need six to eight weeks to get caught back up. And. And we're not going to have any pork for a pork chop or bacon, all this stuff. And so we. It was. It was fun. We totally pivoted to feral hogs. And so we were just, you know, having conversations with our. The processor that handles all the hogs, you know, like what we're. What we're looking for. Luckily, it's at. It's at peak time of year for feral hogs. Like, kind of. They're. When they're ripe.

[Phil]

I Can see it like cradle in the phone between your neck and your ear as you're, you're loading your 50 round mag on your ar.

[Jesse Griffiths]

And so we, we had to, we had to pivot to that which was, you know, very, I mean on brand for us at least when people, because the pork chop is a very popular item, but they would come in and.

[Stephen Rinella]

Be like, oh my God, that pork chop's good.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Well, we don't have it right now, but we do have these much smaller wild boar chops prepared in exactly the same way and did a bunch of just different things. But we were having to process, you know, for every domestic hog we're having to process three 70 pound feral hog carcasses. But luckily they're all of you know that they're at their fattest right now because we had a really, really killer acorn pecan drop.

[Stephen Rinella]

How long does that run for when they're fat?

[Jesse Griffiths]

It depends on weather. So I mean you get like your tree mass drop in October, November. But we had most atypical year and we have, we still have pecans dropping right now in and it's late February, March. So we've had a really incredible year. Relatively dry, so all that stuff sits on the ground really well. And so the feral hogs have maintained a really high level of fat in the regions that have those trees dominant. So like hill country and just to our southeast. And that's where we try to get our hogs from, from. And so they just look really good. So it's very, very optimal timing for that lag to happen where we could just shift into the feral hogs because they were so fatty. But that, I mean that's kind of the level of thinking that we have to put in an organization. We have to call the processor and be like, listen man, we're going to need, we're going to need you to call out, you know, four, five, six whole feral hogs weekly of, of optimal fat content and get them to us in this interim and made it work.

[Stephen Rinella]

There was a restaurant, do you remember that restaurant out on. It was out in the San Juans, San Juan Islands, on the Willows. That wound up being a real controversial deal because they were acting like, you know what I said the name of the restaurant. Phil, which restaurant?

[Phil]

It's kind of what that, that restaurant. The menu's based off of kind of.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't want to get in over my waiters here, but I don't want to like someone. Fact check this.

[Phil]

Was it on that? No, it was, it wasn't on Bash.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't want to. Like. Yeah. Willows. And there was, like, an expose. I don't want to like. What's it called when you say something.

[Corinne]

Oh, this is coming back to me now.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't want to. I don't want slander. Anyways, they had a thing where it was like, everything's from around here. But then there was a. Never mind. I shouldn't have brought it up.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I mean. And to be. Well, to be fair, we. There. There are some things, you know, like, there's some flour and sugar.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, no, no. I mean, no.

[Phil]

It was on Lummy Island.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil]

Willows in.

[Stephen Rinella]

I wasn't gonna do that, but, I mean, it was like a. More like what. The point I was gonna make is that you. Because you couldn't get the pork chops you wanted from the guy you wanted from you, pulled them from your menu, as opposed to running down to Costco.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Right. And a lot of places, unfortunately, that say local or we use local and organic products whenever possible aren't doing it.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

It's widespread.

[Stephen Rinella]

Widespread.

[Phil]

I do want to point out that it permanently closed in 2022.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil]

So, you know, you're.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, they. It was a. They were. It was a little deceptive. I went there and I could. I smelled a fish. Not just the fish that was on my plate. I smell the fish. I was like, I don't know, man. Doesn't seem right. Doesn't seem right. It doesn't add up.

[Randall]

When you say local whenever possible, you leave yourself a lot of.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Well, it wasn't possible.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Or more.

[Randall]

It depends on how hard you want to try to get local.

[Stephen Rinella]

They would do this saying where they're like, they serve some sea cucumbers. And she gestures out the window. Being like, they're. Right. She gestures out the window as though they were caught. They were picked right there. Or it's all that, like, our friends at this, our friends at that, our friends at this. And then you look the stuff up and you're like, sure, you're friends, you know, kind of like. And then like, everything's from the garden, but the garden's not that big.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And it's in. It's in. It's in a temperate rainforest.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

And there's, like, limits to how much you can grow at that. Latitude, certainly. And you just. After a while is like, come on, man. Like, running with it hard.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Phil]

You know, but just like what you said about the. I mean, think of the ability, the logistical ability that you need to have to forecast and work around your primary hog protein supplier, saying, like, six to eight weeks we're out. I mean, I think that's plenty for people to be like, oh, this green Michelin star thing's pretty cool, but boy, Cisco truck every Wednesday.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Sure, right. I mean, it's all. It's enabled by the fact that we have such a good relationship with that producer, you know, and we've known him for 17 years. And so when he. He called, he gave us for plenty of head. Head start, and it enables us to do it. But I think people expect that of us, you know, and we expect that of ourselves, too. We're not gonna. We're not gonna ever purposely not serve something that we don't know about. We've been misled before. We've been cheated. You know, we've had farmers show up and swear up and down that they grew this thing, and then we find a little grown in Mexico sticker on one of them. No, really happened. It's happened. And it's like, what do we do at that point? You know, it's like, very confusing. It's a conundrum.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's.

[Jesse Griffiths]

And it. And you will have people just. And we had one guy in particular, like, he. He misled us for years about product, and it was. It was devastating because I was like, man, that's our reputation right there. Like, we stake everything on this. And I think he just. He got into a lie and then never got out of it. And then when we found out, we were just like, kicked him to the curb. Don't ever come back here, man. Yeah, it was rough.

[Phil]

Well, so what about something like quail? Right? So, I mean, you deal in, like, exotics, which would be Neil Guy and the aud that. That we mentioned, and then feral hogs. We've covered a bunch. Like, there's a. A legal way to get those to a resale market. But. Yeah, what about quail? How does. How does that work?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, you have the. You have, like, game birds or game animals, and then you have wild game, I think. And there's. I think there's two distinct Cate. And we're also very upfront about that. You know, duck. You know, there's some restaurant in New York City that's just like, you know, advertising that they're selling wild duck. I'm like, you want to probably tap the brakes on that. First off, you're not.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

You know, it's just. But you also don't even know enough about the topic to know that that's been Illegal for more than a century. Yeah. And. But you know, it just sounds good to them and, but we serve farm raised duck. You know, we serve farm raised quail. And but then beyond that, if we're presented with an opportunity to source like true wild game, we absolutely will. And we're in Texas where it's, where it's pretty easy. It's facilitated by tda, the Department of Agriculture. And we, we can, we can get nilgai. And this is why we, we tend towards nilgai especially is because it, they don't like corn and they're, they're field harvested in the wild by Broken Arrow Ranch by shooters and helicopters. We tend towards no guy because of that because it is such a pure ingredient. It's an invasive. We'll get some axis here and there and then feral hog has to be trapped live and then brought to the processor and killed with an anti mortem inspection and then post mortem inspection. And then we can get them like that. We can't go out and shoot them. And if you have them in your back, your truck, we can't take those either.

[Stephen Rinella]

Do people show up ever?

[Jesse Griffiths]

A couple times. But a lot of offers, a lot, hey, we got all that you could ever use. I'm like, that's not how it works really. There's very strict protocols behind that. And then lately we've been sourcing a lot of aud and odd ads on the menu. Those are maybe coming from high fence places, maybe coming from low fence places, are catching them in big pin traps. But we're putting all that on there as part of a, like a wider campaign to just to educate people on the pure edibility of all that.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, yeah, can you go talk about that more?

[Yanni]

Because I'm doing a dad hunt in Texas with my boyfriend in Corey actually in April.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, I mean to me odd ad are kind of these, they're. They're like hogs in a lot of ways and, but they just inhabit, I mean in impact.

[Yanni]

Yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

And then they inhabit different regions. You know the far hill country all the way out to west Texas where there's a lot of them and they're widely not eaten. And so by. We have them on our menu.

[Corinne]

You know, when you say widely, let's just like set the stage here.

[Stephen Rinella]

I found it to be a rough. I ate one down to the bone. I found it to be a pretty rough meat.

[Yanni]

Did you, did you. How is that prepared?

[Stephen Rinella]

We made.

[Yanni]

I mean, I mean you made, what'd you do?

[Phil]

Tough or rough as like it wasn't palatable.

[Jesse Griffiths]

May I preface.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

No, no. Did you cook it in a dry heat method? Like, did you grill it or, or, or smoke it?

[Stephen Rinella]

I made jerky with it. We made barbacoa with it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

We cooked its lungs, not its lungs. We cooked its kidneys, heart liverpool. And then I did various, like, roasts and whatnot.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

I never, I just wasn't, you know, it was, it to me wasn't. I wasn't like, oh, my God, I can't wait to get another aud.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Was it flavor or texture?

[Stephen Rinella]

Flavor. Strong.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Really?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, I just, it just wasn't my favorite. Yeah, but everything can't be your favorite.

[Jesse Griffiths]

No, I, I love it. But also, I have to be really clear. And I've never had an audad from west Texas. We've only eaten hill country auto.

[Stephen Rinella]

Mine was from very west.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. So maybe sagey.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Just like, I mean, it was bad. It's just I, I kind of got. A lot of times you eat something like, like take javelina, for instance. If you just took like, if you're cooking a javelini, you're going to be doing steps and processes. Right. You can't just, you don't. No one just takes like a javelina steak and throws it in a pan. Right. It's like a thing that requires you to bring a certain level of expertise to it. I found audad to be the kind of thing where you need to bring a level of expertise to get something that you would be comfortable just serving to friends that come over for dinner.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Sure.

[Stephen Rinella]

It wasn't like fail safe.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. I think that a lot of people go wrong and they, they might treat audad like venison, and then that same person might treat venison like beef. And so you're, you're kind of failing in that. It's, it's a particularly. It's. I mean, it's a metaphorically tough meat. I mean, it's tough animal. You know, they chewy. Yes. Yeah. And that mean when you're cutting an audit, like, you can get tired. I found, you know, it's like the meat is just like, it's got a density to it.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Like, you know, after I break down an audit, I feel like I've had more like 40% more resistance than I would if I just killed a doe, like whitetail. And the way that you approach cooking it, I mean, it's very simple, I think grind and stew, but, you know, you have to incorporate liquid into. Has to be cooked for a very long time. But I, I really like it. We grind it. We make meatballs like your friend mentioned, make meatballs out of it. And we can aggregate all animals that way too. We could get a u, we could get a ram. Doesn't really matter. All goes into the pile to get together. But more than anything, we're just trying to, you know, illuminate the, the, the sheer fact that you can eat.

[Stephen Rinella]

Sure, man. Yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

And, and promote it. I probably the only restaurant in the hemisphere that's got all that on the menu. I don't know of anybody else that even has access to them. And then when people say, where do you get them?

[Yanni]

I'm like, is there any tender part of that that you'd like? Cut small and, and stir fry the tenderloins.

[Jesse Griffiths]

And the, the loins tend to even be a little on the dense side if you. And back straps have not a, not a horizontal grain grain to them. They have a slightly offset grain. And with an audad, you have to be particularly careful with that and that. You have to Nail that, that 90 degree on that, on that slight offset, I'd say. And it's sitting at like 30, you know, degrees off. It's not just straight down. And if you, if you don't nail that, then you've still got this slight angle, this diagonal grain running through your slices. And if you get it super th, then it can be really good. I, we cooked an audad next to a whitetail one night. Just did steak frites. You know, it's like a bordelay sauce. And everybody liked the aud just as much as the whitetail, but I had to slice it super thin. I, I love them. I, you know, we're, we're in a way so lucky that we can, you know, like me and my daughter, hunt a lot and we could, we could kill axis hogs and odds only. And these are all these high impact invasives and it feels pretty good to do something like that. And especially aud, it's like, it's almost a goal now. I'm going to be apologist for those as well. Try to get more people on board with at least are equipping people with better methodology to make it more palatable.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, you turn, you turn the world on to hogs and all you're gonna do, you're gonna help people figure out how to do odd ads.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Yanni]

I'm probably gonna call you when I'm trying to figure out what to do with it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Where are you hunting?

[Yanni]

Way south, bordering Chihuahua.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. So that's, yeah. West Texas. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

For those of you who like to spend your life outdoors, there's no such thing as an off season. And there's no better truck to power through season after season than one from the ram heavy duty lineup. It's got power that goes the distance. With the available high output 6.7 liter Cummins turbo diesel and a 50 gallon fuel tank to help you travel further, you can haul it all. Head to ram.com to find the right ram heavy duty truck for your next trip outdoors. That's R A m dot com. You know, I always put in, I always draw for the. I hunted them out in west Texas, but I always draw. I always put in in New Mexico, but I haven't drawn in New Mexico yet. Yeah, yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

You'll be out in the Davis mountains.

[Stephen Rinella]

Probably because you do like public. Like in New Mexico you can do like public land audit hunts.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Randall]

It's the grain, the differentiation in the grain and the. In the back straps as you're talking about. Is that something that's like characteristic to sheep in general?

[Jesse Griffiths]

No. Deer too.

[Randall]

Deer too.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. Like if you have a larger deer loin and I mean the ones, the deer back straps that I deal with are way smaller than what you guys have or elk or mule deer or even larger whitetails. And so if you like, just take a really close look at it and you'll see that it's just slightly offset that. And then when you're slicing it out, you're gonna. If you come in and you hit it at a very slight angle, you're going to be getting that true 90 degree on it. And that's where you get the most tenderness out of that slice.

[Randall]

Gotcha. No, I thought you were. Yeah. Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

How do these all dads come to you? In what form?

[Jesse Griffiths]

They're. They're trapped in the same types of traps that the feral hogs come in are trapped in. So you've got your, like, your cell phone style drop gate traps. And so they'll just wait for them and drop the trap on them. And. And we've been so consistent that we've been able to get them because then our processor is talking to trappers. And then once that incentive like stream is reached, they know, oh, we need more odd ad and so they start bringing us more.

[Stephen Rinella]

But what I mean is how do they show up at your place?

[Jesse Griffiths]

In what form? Either trim or whole carcass, depending what.

[Stephen Rinella]

Our needs are cut off behind the ears.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, yeah. The skin and gutted whole carcass. Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

But you don't have big old pile of them horns laying around though.

[Jesse Griffiths]

No, no, no.

[Stephen Rinella]

Got it.

[Yanni]

I got a question. So you were saying like the odd ad, like, it needs like moisture, water. So I defrosted some rib meat that I had sliced out from white, from whitetail and I seared on a cast. I was just in a rush. I wasn't trying to prep a meal. I just want to eat some meat. So I just like put some dry rub seasoning oil through in the cast iron pan. Just a couple minutes.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm already reaching for my dental floss. I'm reaching my dental floss stick right now. Quick meal for three years.

[Yanni]

As an aside, I'm. I don't always like soft textured meat. I don't always want, like a really soft back strap. Like, I'm used to eating tendon, which sometimes can be like melt in your mouth. Right. But sometimes it's chewier. So I'm like, I think the, the, the breadth of, of meat textures that I'm comfortable with and happy to gnaw on, like, that's, I mean, in Asian cuisine, right. It's just not exactly the same. But, but I felt like the meat was, it was juicier and yeah, like, there was a little bit of chew, but it was juicier. Then I used some of the same rib meat and I, like, whatever did Chinese, five spice daikon, blah, blah, blah, threw that in the pressure cooker for 12 minutes. Now, that meat was so dry but like kind of pull apart and I really didn't like that. What happens, it's collagen.

[Jesse Griffiths]

So belly is very specific to this, where you're going to have these striations of lean meat, very dense lean meat, a very thick and solid layer of collagen or silver skin, and then typically layers of fat. And you might repeat that a couple times. And so collagen isn't going to melt into gelatin until it hits about 190 over a period of time. Now, a pressure cooker can achieve that, but if you just cook it really quick, then you're not going to hit that. I mean, you might hit 190, but you're not going to hit it for two or three hours that it's going to start to break down. I always like pork. People sometimes are surprised. Pork is cooked through at one temperature, but it shreds at a different level. It's cooked through at 160, 165. But when pork shoulder starts to fall apart, that's 195, 200. And so that's that collagen breaking down and then fat and things like that, so.

[Yanni]

But the meat itself feels drier, like I wanted it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, that's possible too. I don't have a ton of experience with pressure cookers, so I don't know really what happened there. If that had, if you had braised that maybe with some sort of liquid, like it was in a. Maybe a more moderate temperature, you might have had a more silken.

[Yanni]

Okay.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Experience. Like for me, braising meats like stew meat, or if you want to make a sugo or a ragu or Bolognese chili bourguignon, no better meat than rib meat.

[Yanni]

Okay, but you're. But you're doing that slow and low on 4, 5, 6 hours. No pressure cooker stuff.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Yanni]

You do it the real way.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know what dish years I've been making a fair bit when I'm having company over is that one that, that, that German style roulade.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, yeah. That is like one of the most popular because we did it on the show down there at the Ataria and I rolled that whole, whole belly up. People love that. It's it and it's accessible. And it's a new use for that cut that they just didn't really consider before. And it's so easy to peel that whole thing off in a big sheet.

[Stephen Rinella]

You got to be, I mean, and you gotta be decent with a knife. So what Jesse does, like, if you're sitting there at home, picture, like, picture you got a skinned out deer carcass laying there. A lot of guys are going to remove the rib meat. You're just going to kind of go between the ribs and get all these strips that look like a jerky strip. Not suitable for jerky, but it's going to look like a jerky strip. Picture that you came in and removed all the meat in one big sheet. So that you got every rib you come to, you got to skin around, not skin around every rib you come to. You got to flay around the ribbon up and over, up and over. And you wind up with like, you basically remove that deer's side as a sheet. And then Jesse lays mustard. Yep. Good bacon, Good seedy mustard all over it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Pickled jalapenos.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yep. Onion.

[Stephen Rinella]

Onion. What else you put in there?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Just. Is it mustard, bacon, onion, and then some sort of pickle? Traditional German would be just like a gherkin or a, like a Cornishon style pickle or dill pickles even. And then you roll that up, roll.

[Stephen Rinella]

That up, tie it and then braise it. Man, them suckers are good, man.

[Jesse Griffiths]

They're good. Good.

[Stephen Rinella]

And I've been cooking the hell out of those. When I get, you know, when I get a piece. Yeah, that's good.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, I, I love that. I always take that off the deer. You also don't have to go in and get that. That meat between the ribs. A lot of times I'll just take that whole sheet off and then later I'll come in and peel that. Our. Our. Or cut that meat out. The intercostal or the finger.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. But it just depends on what time of year it is because, like, if.

[Phil]

If you're time of year where you can see through.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like if you kill a buck that's been. If you kill a buck that's been gone through the rut.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

I mean, you got to get in there to wind up with a whole sheet.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Because they lose so much weight.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, yeah.

[Phil]

If you take, take the height off, it basically turns into jerky in 12 hours on its own. On the bone.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Like you leave it hanging in the wind and all of a sud. It's like, it's like a glass you can kind of see through. But yeah, that. That is a good dish. There's one I texted you about the other day because I like your. This is more of a.

[Corinne]

Can I do a. I want to have a follow up question because I think oftentimes I look at that slab of meat and I'm like, man, it's all covered up and foamy purple bloodshot. You know, how do you deal with that?

[Jesse Griffiths]

I. I mean, if you've lost part of it, then I don't, I don't mess with bloodshot stuff. I cut it out well, but it's.

[Corinne]

Not, it's not like it's actually where the impact was or even where like the little, you know, around the impact. But it's just like the.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

The blood and the purple stuff is spread. Like at some point. Do you do some cleaning?

[Jesse Griffiths]

I trim what I can, but if you've lost one of your sides or flanks or whatever you want to call.

[Corinne]

It, it is what it is.

[Jesse Griffiths]

All right.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, I do it. I. I do that cut when I see a. A piece that is suitable.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

I've made. I did it with. I took. Pulled a big sheet off of a moose. There's too much.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, it's gonna be.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, it's too much.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, it's like.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, there's a lot of go. There's a lot going on between the Layers of all the good stuff in the middle. It just winds up being like.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, I could see that.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. It's too much of a good thing.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. What was the other dish you were talking about?

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, I texted you. So when you, me and Katie ate dinner, one of my favorite things you guys make is that. That brined pork chop. Oh, man. So I had some. I had some wild hog. I had a wild hog back strap that had a nice fat layer on it. And I asked you about your brine. It was a very simple brine. I feel like you put some things in there that are dumb.

[Jesse Griffiths]

The star anise.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, it's just. I don't think it matters.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I think it absolutely matters.

[Stephen Rinella]

You're the chef. You're the chef.

[Jesse Griffiths]

So I made. I made smothered pork chops the other night. And it's the key to that, is that you brine those. And if you have, like, a leaner, feral hog, this is great. You cut those pork chops, but you brine them with that star anise, dust them in flour, ton of onions, and then some stock, and then cook that down and just makes this nice oniony gravy. But then when you go in and.

[Stephen Rinella]

You keep back up, I got. I got you confused.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Just little thin slices of back strap or pork chops.

[Stephen Rinella]

But I wanted. I haven't told you what I did with it, so you can't correct me.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Well, I'm just. I'm a little worked up about the star anise right now. I want to give it.

[Stephen Rinella]

All right, yeah, explain.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Did you omit it from the brine?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yes.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Of course you did.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know what?

[Jesse Griffiths]

I did, okay?

[Stephen Rinella]

Because if I wanted to taste like that, I'd put that on the meat rather than trusting that my brine is gonna like, you know, you gotta admit, dude, you have to admit, sometimes people are putting things in brine because it looks cool in your fridge.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Okay, you don't agree the star anise is absolutely. If you like the pork chop at Dai Doeg, the star anise is a key component to that.

[Stephen Rinella]

So you're telling me. You're telling me that if I Pepsi challenged you and I. And I did one of your pork chops.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yes.

[Randall]

Let's do it. I'll run down to rose hours right now.

[Stephen Rinella]

I would like to see it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

24 hours.

[Corinne]

Well, I was thinking you and I can fly down to died Austin and go to Dai due, and we could have five.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm gonna make five. I'm gonna have your team make me five.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

And I'm gonna have one of them be with star anise.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I got it.

[Stephen Rinella]

And I'm gonna have you eat it and you tell me what one had.

[Jesse Griffiths]

In the brine in the bag. Got it? Yeah, yeah, got it.

[Stephen Rinella]

It was pretty good. Anyways. What I did.

[Phil]

What?

[Stephen Rinella]

I. I want to hear your opinion. You know better me. But what I did is I. I soaked my. It was, you know, a wild hog back strap. It's not a giant thing.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Sure.

[Stephen Rinella]

I just did the whole damn thing in the brine.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

Then grilled it and sliced it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[Stephen Rinella]

Son of a. That was good, man.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, that would have been better.

[Stephen Rinella]

Tell me what I should have done.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Put some anise in there. It's a key.

[Stephen Rinella]

You think so? You don't think it's just metal masturbation?

[Jesse Griffiths]

No, not at all. I always. I always compare like a. Like a feral hog, especially. It's got a bit of that overt, strong flavor to it. We won't use the G word as like a. A rough piece of plywood. And the star anise is some fine grit sandpaper coming in and buffing that out. And it's just like, it just helps it. And that's. I mean, the entire spice trait. Were we talking about this last night in Venice? A little bit. Yeah. It's just like.

[Phil]

But I do want to just let you know that you're in a safe place. If you haven't actually thought about your menu and the ingredients, it's okay to just say that.

[Stephen Rinella]

It feels like I wondered why I.

[Corinne]

Was putting that in.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Lying in bed tonight.

[Stephen Rinella]

I never knew it was so stupid Sitting on the.

[Randall]

Shelf staring at the.

[Stephen Rinella]

I never knew it was so, so stupid to make one of my number one favorite dishes the way I made.

[Randall]

It at my award winning restaurant.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm glad I talked to that young man at that podcast.

[Jesse Griffiths]

But this, the. The entire spice trade was there to kind of mask strong meats. And so the spices, I think, have a very clear role in that it's not overt. And people that hate fennel are licorice and stuff like that typically still like the pork chop.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay, so I was maybe a little wrong. I don't know. I'll try.

[Phil]

I'm ripping through just for funsies, here, some Google reviews of Dai Dewey.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, no.

[Phil]

And I think this would like fall in Steve's review category. This person had a pastrami sandwich. Really good, but a little heavy to pick up.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, that pastrami is pretty serious.

[Phil]

But I don't understand, like, what your expectation of A pastrami sandwich would be.

[Stephen Rinella]

It was too much. I got too much sandwich.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Phil]

So the dining experience was great. Knocked you a star for your parking situation.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. When I. When I was pouring the concrete out there, I was looking around thinking maybe a couple more of that. I was like, nah, I think this is enough.

[Stephen Rinella]

But I also just, like, think of.

[Phil]

How many restaurants there are in the planet that has no parking.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Correct.

[Phil]

None.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yes. I would like to address that person right now and be like, we rent that building, not our parking lot.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's the thing. When you. When you're checking out a product on whatever website and then, you know, you're wondering, like, it has some one stars, and it winds up being something that's like the. The delivery guy left it, you know, at my neighbor's place.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

One star.

[Randall]

We had a guy who commented, you know, he was very disappointed in you personally because of the parking situation at the University of Montana. He said, I would have thought you could have done a better organized event than to have parking like that.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, geez. Impressed about that. Turkey season's coming up.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, yeah. Fifteen days from now, me and Yanni will be looking at. At Gobblers 14 days from now and hopefully get a couple upside down on the 15th.

[Corinne]

Roosting them.

[Stephen Rinella]

What, are people dumb not to do this turkey season with their turkeys?

[Jesse Griffiths]

I mean, we're gonna.

[Stephen Rinella]

Let's go negative.

[Jesse Griffiths]

We're gonna go baseline on this. And I recently had a. An experience where I spoke to a lot of turkey hunters in one confined area, and the number that still aren't taking the legs is pretty stunning. I just don't get it. Like, I mean, they're tough. It's like, well, you didn't cook them long enough legs. I think there's a lot of value on the wings. Montana. I just. I had no idea you have to take the wings according to the rest.

[Stephen Rinella]

I thought they undid that.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I feel like I just saw that.

[Corinne]

You know, I. I mean, last year, I read those rags. You're still supposed to take the wings.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Of course you did. I mean.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, I know that they undid it on a lot of other birds.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Okay.

[Phil]

I mean, obviously, this is not what a lot of people do. Right? But, like, if you. It is not hard to pluck a turkey. I will argue with anybody. Like, it just does not take that much time. But if you go all the way out to the wing tips, like, those things are so full of. There's, like, probably more fat and collagen in that little section than a Lot of the. The bird itself. So, like, making a little stock out of those wings is absolutely worth your while.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, I, I've got a routine with the wings. I am. And we, we covered this last time. I. I don't pluck my birds because I. My what I use them for. I don't need the skin on there.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yep.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I do mostly like fried turkey or cutlets off of. Off of the breasts and then, you know, just slow cooking and shredding those legs. But. But I will, every once in a while I'll pluck one just to. Just to look at it and have that skin. But I don't know, just utilize more of it. I don't. I don't get the time. Deal. You sat under a tree for seven hours and take you 30 extra minutes. I don't have time for this.

[Stephen Rinella]

Can I give a. I'm going to give. I'm not asking you if I can. I'm going to give a people leg a way to think about turkey legs. So let's say you just skin the turkey leg out, Right. So you skin the breast back like you're breasting the bird. You keep skinning to get to the thighs. I like to take and cut the foot off at the ankle. Take a fillet knife and insert it and skin up. So, you know, you got like where the skin meets the feather on a leg.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

That part's hard to pull.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

So take a fillet knife and flay. Make a skinning cut like you're skinning a deer's leg out. Make a skinning cut a few inches up the leg. Then you skin it. It goes quicker. It helps because it's hard to skin that part the other way around.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Right.

[Stephen Rinella]

I freeze those. So I got the drummy in the thigh and I put them. If you match them up, if you're smart about your geometry, you can match them up in a bag and you actually wind up with a rectangle in a freezer bag.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

See, I'll even do them purposely part them out because I feel like the drumsticks take so much longer than the thighs that I now cook them separately.

[Phil]

I agree with that.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I like that.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay.

[Jesse Griffiths]

But also, two turkey legs is quite a bit.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm not. Well, you know, he hadn't let me finish.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Sorry.

[Stephen Rinella]

Hear me out now.

[Phil]

It's like that front of house, back a house tension.

[Stephen Rinella]

I need to be walking through one. This is just one man's approach. This is one man's approach. Right. So then come cooking time, I got one of those Any. Like, I. I have some of those when I got. When I got married and I've been married a long time. Those La Crusade, the giant oval La Crusade thing.

[Yanni]

Those are nice.

[Stephen Rinella]

All right.

[Jesse Griffiths]

So nice.

[Stephen Rinella]

Lay as many of those two, three, four, whatever drumstick thigh combos. You put a season's worth of turkeys in there. If you got two turkeys, put them in there. I cover them with. With liquid. If I got stock, I do it with stock. But you don't even really need to do that if you're just short on time. Then I put foil over it to help not lose my liquid from steam. And just put it. Put it in your oven at 300 degrees and forget that you did it. If you got to go work to work for nine hours, forget. Just add more water and forget that you did it. Leave a sticky note that says, do not mess with oven so that your wife doesn't come in and turn the oven off because you're not home and haven't been home in hours. And, like, all you're doing is you're getting it to the point where you can, like, tear it up and then you'll pick it and you'll have a giant bowl to pick meat. Now get a bunch of. Get a cast iron skillet and put, like, a quarter inch of beef tallow in it or whatever. Bear grease and cram that on that pan until the bottom is burning. Flip it until the bottom is, like, crispy.

[Yanni]

Let's write a recipe this way.

[Randall]

I was gonna say this is a.

[Yanni]

Great approach for a cookbook.

[Phil]

Star anise.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then you take all that, and it's just like, you just do whatever you want with that.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Certainly.

[Stephen Rinella]

You put it on tacos, you put it on sandwiches. I freeze it again and mark it like camping.

[Yanni]

And then.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then you go camping, and no one feels like doing anything.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

So you open that bag up, dump it into a pan with barbecue sauce. Yeah. And have more sandwiches. It's like. It's not that hard.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Yanni]

Let's write the next.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's like. It's like, oh, wow, now I have a giant pile of super good stuff to eat.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Right. It's so easy.

[Stephen Rinella]

I can, like, do anything with.

[Corinne]

There is a couple things, though, that you can even, I think, to make it better. One, we talked about this recently.

[Stephen Rinella]

You can't make it better.

[Corinne]

Yeah. Well, no, it is like, instead of, like, after you shred it back into the liquid and let it sit for a day or two, just soaking in that liquid and let that meat suck that Moisture back in.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yep.

[Corinne]

It makes a huge difference. I think for any slow and low.

[Stephen Rinella]

Recipe with wild gang game, you can make it better.

[Corinne]

And then I would say too, when you're gonna go with the big, you know, bear grease cast iron skillet fry session, you can't overload a pan because you're going to bring down your temp too much. So you got to do it in batches so you get that nice crisp that you want.

[Stephen Rinella]

I disagree.

[Corinne]

Because if you put all those four legs all in there at one time.

[Stephen Rinella]

You can't do four. No, no. Because I mean, you don't have to have an impressive cast. No, I didn't mean that. That. Yeah, like you got more than you can.

[Corinne]

Yeah, we can't have like two inches.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, no, you got more. That's a, That's a great clarification. You wind up. If you got a, if you got like a, like a 10 inch skillet, I don't know, what do you got? Like you're making three quarters of an inch of meat.

[Randall]

Meat pancakes.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, you got three quarter. Yeah, you're right. You can't pile them all in there. You just have a big. It'd be all steamy and.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

You wouldn't get what you're after.

[Jesse Griffiths]

This is carnitas.

[Corinne]

Now, how important.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm just trying to make it sound. Oh, can you settle the fight between me and Jane?

[Corinne]

How sure. Can I have a question first? How important is it to you? Because you didn't mention this in your recipe here. I want to know if it's important to you that before they go into the liquid that you would sear or broil those legs to sort of crispy outside, put salt and pepper on them, you know, do that.

[Stephen Rinella]

I was trying to do. I was trying to do the thing where I'm talking people into how easy it is. So I was leaving out all these little added things one can do.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I feel like. Well, I want to know the answer.

[Corinne]

Does it make a difference?

[Jesse Griffiths]

What he's describing is. I mean, other cultures do this, but most notably Mexico does it where there's this very slow, gentle cook followed by a crisping caramelization at the end. So the carnitas effect, if you were to do that in the beginning, where you're getting. Achieving the Maillard reaction on the outside, getting those sugars caramelized on the meat and then cooking it and then doing it again, probably not necessary as much because you're going to achieve that at the end. You're going to get that crispiness at the end. So I would just go. I would. I would.

[Corinne]

Straight to the liquid strain.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Liquid. Yeah.

[Corinne]

That's good. Saves me time.

[Phil]

I'm a. I'm a bird plucker because I don't like, bring. I don't do a lot of, like, packaging in the field. So I have that skin as my barrier to dirt and everything else. And then when I get home, I inevitably am pulling the skin off of everything. But then I'll. I'll throw that in the stock pot or what I've done. And I'm. This is experimentation at home is salt that stuff, cut it into strips and just let it like sit there. It's not like, very moist anyway. But then fry it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

That really. So now he's making chicharones.

[Phil]

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Huh. Yeah.

[Phil]

I mean, it's kind of cheating. Like, there's not a lot to that turkey skin, you know?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, but.

[Phil]

And fried things taste great, so.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know what? I made one time, or I actually made this way more than one time. Three times is. You ever skin the whole Damn Turkey out?

[Randall]

3 is way more than one.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, hear me out.

[Jesse Griffiths]

You'll see, you'll appreciate it, especially if you're a sailfish.

[Corinne]

Nice.

[Randall]

That's it. That's the episode.

[Stephen Rinella]

You ever skin a whole damn turkey out and then lay the hide out? And then you grind the turkey up, you grind the dark meat up, plaster it on that hide, and then you take the breast meat and cut long strips and plat and lay those all out. And then you take like pistachio palatine. Yeah. Galantine.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Galantine.

[Stephen Rinella]

Galantine. Yeah. And then roll it up like a sausage. And then braise that. That's pretty good.

[Jesse Griffiths]

That sounds non intensive. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

But why don't you just. Can you settle the fight between me and Giannis? This is going to be the final word.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Okay.

[Corinne]

I'm so excited.

[Stephen Rinella]

Do you know about the fight?

[Corinne]

No.

[Stephen Rinella]

You do?

[Corinne]

Of course not. Well, I mean, I have no, but at the.

[Stephen Rinella]

Sam Bates has been moderating the fight.

[Corinne]

Ah, yeah. Then I do know. Please, let's go.

[Stephen Rinella]

If you're rating food.

[Jesse Griffiths]

R A T I N G. Yeah, you're rating.

[Stephen Rinella]

You're. You're rating a dish.

[Corinne]

You could use the synonym judging.

[Stephen Rinella]

You're judging food. Do you feel that if. If you're judging a dish and there's a bunch of criteria, and then those criteria get like a one to five score. So they're additive. Right. Like, they all need to work in. Like they all need to work in synchronicity or they all need to. What am I trying to say?

[Randall]

It's a holistic.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's a whole. Yeah. You're making a holistic score with, like, five criteria, and all five criteria are scored one to five. Do you feel that saying approachable and creative creates a conflict where if it's one, it's less likely to be the other, and if it's the other, it's less likely to be the one.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I'm sorry. So there's a scale that goes from approachable to creative?

[Stephen Rinella]

No, no, no.

[Randall]

I mean, the question is really, can something be creative and approachable?

[Stephen Rinella]

It can, yes. In some circumstances. I agree. I just feel like in some cases these things are offset. Approachability and creativity, meaning. We were just talking about. Let's say you were the first guy to ever make a Gallantine. You would get a very high creativity score.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yes.

[Stephen Rinella]

But approachability, someone would say, I'm not going to skin a whole damn turkey out like that. I'm gonna give that a one. That's not very approachable. That looks impossible. I just think so. My argument is that there's a conflict in scoring a dish. There's a conflict between approachability and creativity. Yanni believes that they are perfectly aligned.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I wouldn't say perfectly aligned, but if you can create something, which is kind of one of the key tenets of writing recipes is how do you achieve both of those things? Because so much has already been written. So if you were to, like, make a really simple brine, you know, that's easy, that's approachable, but if you want to make it really good and really creative, you can put star anis in there.

[Stephen Rinella]

Can you answer the question?

[Jesse Griffiths]

I did.

[Stephen Rinella]

Who wins the fight?

[Jesse Griffiths]

I would. I'm going to go, Yanni, because I think that you. It. It doesn't have to pull. You could have high scores in both. Because I think if it was easy enough and then it was just like. And it was something like, oh, I never thought of that. You know, like, that's great. It's a great little trick to do. And it's just like, it's easy. You can be creative and then you can still. I mean, you want to inspire people that cook game to actually do it. You don't want to have these crazy, complicated recipes. Maybe a couple. But for the most part, you want something approachable, but you got to have that. What's the thing? What's the icing on there? What's the thing that really kind of makes that recipe shine? You gotta have a little bit of creativity or Every recipe needs to have this one different technique, different ingredient or something that is simple that's just gonna elevate that beyond all the recipes they've already seen.

[Randall]

So I've been making grilled cheeses for a while, my whole life. And only a few years ago did I discover that you can make a traditional grilled cheese and then you finely shred some parmesan on the outside. The grilled cheese.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Flip it back and forth.

[Jesse Griffiths]

That's it.

[Randall]

And then you have a crust of cheese on the outside of your grilled cheese.

[Jesse Griffiths]

That is a. That is a perfect example of that. That is approachable and creative. I say five and five.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay.

[Randall]

I didn't come up with it, just so you know.

[Phil]

He's got his wrong answer face going on.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, no, I said I put it to. I put it to him. He came out. Yeah, Yanni's right, I'm wrong. I don't care.

[Corinne]

Do you ever just make a regular grilled cheese?

[Phil]

We'll never think about it.

[Corinne]

But don't stop there. And then add another layer of cheese and another piece of buttered bread and just flip it over and then start making layers of grilled cheese and have maybe two or three grilled cheeses all.

[Yanni]

In one different cheese.

[Randall]

That is interesting. You're basically describing a Burger King Baconator without the patties and bacon.

[Corinne]

I've never had one of those, but I've made many grilled cheeses that have four or five layers.

[Randall]

Might be a Wendy's product, actually.

[Corinne]

Yeah, the Burger King.

[Phil]

I'm getting what's called like a stacker or something.

[Randall]

Yeah, yeah, you could get.

[Corinne]

Yeah, you could get a quad.

[Phil]

Four patties. It was great.

[Randall]

Sorry, I've gotten this way off track.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

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[Jesse Griffiths]

I mean, you know, the heart liver gizzard, it's good stuff. Of every. Of all those, you know, delicious animals out there, that's some of the mildest, especially that liver. I love it.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay, so what do you do with it?

[Jesse Griffiths]

And it's a simple pate. Really nice.

[Stephen Rinella]

Walk me through it. Make it creative and approachable.

[Jesse Griffiths]

You're gonna sear the liver till it's about medium.

[Stephen Rinella]

So, like, I'm dumb.

[Jesse Griffiths]

So, okay, you're gonna put it.

[Stephen Rinella]

I got a turkey. I got a turkey liver. Okay. Then I do one.

[Jesse Griffiths]

What you're gonna. You're gonna season it with salt and pepper, and you're gonna put it in a hot pan with some butter, and you're gonna get a little brown on it.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay.

[Jesse Griffiths]

And you're gonna cook it till it's not super firm. A little pink in. In there, and you're gonna remove that. And then in a blender, you're gonna blend, and there's probably gonna be some sort of shallot or onions chopped up.

[Stephen Rinella]

So it'd be good to have your buddy's turkey liver, too.

[Jesse Griffiths]

It would be. It'll be helpful. Yeah, yeah. You've got a couple. It's gonna. It'll help.

[Stephen Rinella]

And it'd be also good if you got the gall sack off it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Do that. That little green thing cut around that.

[Stephen Rinella]

Get out of there.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Get out of there. Yeah. And then that. You cool it off a little bit, and that goes into a blender, and you blend it until it's a smooth paste. And you're adding a little bit of cold butter every couple seconds till it kind of. It's smooth and it's incorporated. Check the seasoning. There's, you know, add some sort of booze in there is usually good. A little bit of brandy or apple jack, something like that is usually nice. Just a few drops of that. And then if you. You really want to make it good, you're gonna. You're gonna pass that. You're gonna press it with a spatula through a little mesh bowl strainer, and that's gonna remove any of the sinews. And. And just the little stringy parts that are in a liver might be hiding in there. Yeah. And then that'll get it super smooth. And then you just chill that. And then you eat that with a little bit of warm toasted bread. So good.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay, hit me with a gizzard here. I got a gizzard.

[Jesse Griffiths]

The gizzard. My favorite way to do the combo is what me and Kyle cooked last time.

[Stephen Rinella]

Really.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Here was the ragu, where we, you know, grind the heart, liver, gizzard all together, and then render out a little bit of bacon or pancetta till that's browned. And then you add that ground heart, liver Gizzard in there. Then you grind some carrot, onion, celery, Put that in there and cook that down. A little tomato paste, little stock, and then hit that with pasta.

[Stephen Rinella]

It's fast.

[Jesse Griffiths]

It's. It's. Yeah. I mean, like less than an hour. And you get these three really distinct textures. You know, we were talking about that. You know, the gizzards, you know, it's got a little strength to it. The, the liver smooths everything out and the heart's kind of in between. You get a little bit of. I mean, I prefer pancetta, but I make a lot of it out of hog bellies. But smoked bacon is delicious as well. A little bit of tomato paste and then that just slow cooks. And then you just cook some pasta. Toss that in there. A ton of pecorino or parmesan.

[Corinne]

Is that recipe in the turkey book?

[Jesse Griffiths]

It is.

[Phil]

Darn right it is.

[Jesse Griffiths]

It is.

[Phil]

I took everybody's collective turkey offal and made. Made that in one big batch last year at the end of turkey season and then package that up for camp meals.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, that's cool.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Me and Yanni, that's. That's on the menu.

[Corinne]

Oh, good.

[Jesse Griffiths]

We're having.

[Stephen Rinella]

You want to know another one I stole from you that I try? I took one of your domestic meat recipes and converted it to a wild meat recipe. Is that at Dai do way you guys do that? I don't know if you're still doing it. It. You got all those chicken hearts.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, the skewer.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Which you're like, he's cooking chicken hearts in fat and then skewering them.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then putting them on a hot grill.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

So I take a, like a small little. I don't know how you even describe it, man. Like a. I don't man, like a really heavy sided, like imagine like a enameled Dutch oven. It's like dinky, sticky, you know, because that way I'm not wasting so much of my fat.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Right.

[Corinne]

A little croc.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, I take like a little croc and just put all a bunch of hearts in there and top it up. You could top it with olive oil if you needed to, but if you had like beef tallow or something, top it in there and just ever so like turn your burner down about as low as you can get it and offset. Offset it even. It's just like you're trying to do. You're trying to do like a confit, which is a super low heat. Right. It's not, it's not bubbling like fry oil. It's like a little bit like now and then it's like a little blue.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Bloop blue. Because if you overdo it, it'll. They'll mush out on you. But I do it like that, and then I skew room.

[Corinne]

How long does that take, the oil part?

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't know, man. Maybe I do them for an hour.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah.

[Randall]

It's like a little fun, dude.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Duck hearts, grouse hearts, turkey hearts. You want to cut them up? They're pretty big.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, probably half them.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. And then get a. Have either a live fire or on a grill. And then I put hot. Yeah. And I don't know if you do it. I can't remember if you do it, but I do. I put some cayenne powder on there, some chili powder, Something spicy.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. Hot honey would be really good.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then. Yeah, that is good. My kids will walk by just eating those little things. They love them.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. The chicken hearts at the restaurant is my daughter's favorite.

[Stephen Rinella]

You still serve that dish?

[Jesse Griffiths]

That's a good one. I mean, the confit technique is just so applicable to so many things. You know, just for, you know, getting it tender and then coming in on the grill afterwards and just getting it cold and then putting it on the grill and just you've got that tender meat, and then you're adding in that char and sear and smoke. It works on a lot.

[Corinne]

Oftentimes I limit myself with doing confit because I feel like the amount of oil or fat needed and the cost associated with that. So a few times I've done it in a bag sous vide style. How do you feel about that?

[Jesse Griffiths]

I feel like it. It just doesn't work as well. I get it, though. I have a kind of unlimited source of it. I would say just try to match your. Like he's saying, match your. Your cooking vessel to the. The quantity of meat and save as much of that fat as you can. And you can reuse the fat.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, that's what I started doing more. I I on, I got a shelf above my thing, I got little glass jars full of various oils that have had various things happen to them. And everyone knows not to mess with them. They just get the new stuff. But I'll be like, oh, I remember that oil, and I'll just use it for something.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. You know, you can reuse it for cold pee. You might want to go in and get that. That liquid bottle bottom part out of there, because sometimes that can spoil. But if you've salted the meat Pre previously. Usually there's enough salt in that layer that it'll keep it from going off. But. But if that's another reason, you put it in like a glass jar or something tall sided so you can see it, maybe scrape it out and get that part off the bottom.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know what the fur trapper Stu Miller does with his old fish fry oil?

[Corinne]

Nope.

[Stephen Rinella]

He saves his old fish fry oil, puts it in a squirt bottle and when he's set in coon cuffs.

[Corinne]

And.

[Stephen Rinella]

You get let it dribble down the bank and get into the creek or whatever, you know, flings a craving on them. Fish fry grease I've had really good. It's like everything a raccoon could possibly want. Right. It's like grease and fish with hints.

[Yanni]

Of parsley in it or whatever.

[Phil]

Really good luck with. With crane legs and goose legs in the Doing it the sous vide com fee style. Yeah. And man. Yeah. A lot of times it's like dealing with the big vat to do a bunch of legs like a meal for one person. Pretty darn easy in the SUV style.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

Buddy of mine shows up at the tailgate with those. So after a long day of hunting, just pulls that out of the cooler cold. Already done.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Corinne]

And just cuts that vac bag open and just hands out pheasant legs to people. So you're having a beer and a confit pheasant leg and it's delicious.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's good.

[Corinne]

It's awesome.

[Yanni]

Do any of you guys do it the Seth and Kelsey Morris way? Because I know that they're pretty anti plastic and I put myself into that camp too where I just. I don't know, I'm like heating plastic. Doesn't sound good.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like sous vide in a silicon. Silicon Ziploc.

[Yanni]

Pack a. A mason jar full and then put the mason jar.

[Stephen Rinella]

Seth's been reading up on that taint shrinkage.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

He's gonna start a podcast called Taint Talk.

[Jesse Griffiths]

It could be.

[Yanni]

Maybe it's about that. But it's like, I don't know. My reasons are different. I don't care about that.

[Stephen Rinella]

But just like hell we're gonna try to get them. Sponsored by Tate Cookies. Tate Taint Talk by Tates.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I have a recipe in my first book where you take a teal and you put it in a. In a pint mason jar with some par cooked beans and sausage and bacon and then you put it in a water bath and cook it in the. In the jar like that. It's really good.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh yeah, that's a good way to go. Let me hit with another one. Yeah, why not just set it in a. Set it up. Put your. Put your fat and your meat in a glass jar and set the glass jar down in there.

[Yanni]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Corinne]

You take more fat again.

[Stephen Rinella]

Or use the silicon bags.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Pack it in there pretty good.

[Stephen Rinella]

Let me hit. So you did. You did the guts. You. We covered skin, we covered the guts, we covered the legs. So you just throw the breasts out?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Throw them out. I got a good one.

[Stephen Rinella]

You find Jesse's turkeys. Everything's gone but the breasts later.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Not true. That is. That's my birthday meal.

[Stephen Rinella]

I'm joking.

[Jesse Griffiths]

My birthday is mid May. And so it's like. It is turkey and dewberry cobbler every year. Fried turkey. Along the lines of sous vide. I think that. That I. This is how we cook our Thanksgiving turkey breasts.

[Stephen Rinella]

Wild turkey.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Wild turkey.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I put them. You know, we sous vide them all.

[Stephen Rinella]

But, like, I'm dumb, like.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Tell me the whole thing.

[Jesse Griffiths]

So you're going to use what essentially would be poultry seasoning. So you're going to have thyme and oregano, maybe some garlic, maybe some lemon, rosemary, and then most importantly, a little bit of celery.

[Stephen Rinella]

I have a jar of your poultry season.

[Jesse Griffiths]

There you go.

[Corinne]

Dried or fresh? We talking.

[Jesse Griffiths]

It doesn't matter. You can use celery seed, a few celery leaves. Just kind of get that in there. And you can just change up your herbs as you want and then season your turkey breast as you want it, and then put it in the bag. And then I might.

[Stephen Rinella]

You're taking too many shortcuts here. Is this in your book?

[Jesse Griffiths]

It's 100 in there. Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

All right, go on. Go. Go the way you're going. I just want to make sure people can get it. But it's in the turkey book. It's in the turkey, but still walk it through it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And so if you're listening and you're like, what now take the turkey breast.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Season it with those delicious things.

[Stephen Rinella]

So you.

[Corinne]

You haven't sliced the turkey breast?

[Jesse Griffiths]

No, no. It's a whole turkey breast. Got it. Could be tenderloin on if you want. I usually remove the tenderloins. Yep. But. And I've. So I've got that whole turkey breast in there. And then seal that up to three days before you're gonna cook it, and then just let it sit. And then all that seasoning will basically act as a brine. And then I cook that in a water bath at 140 degrees for three hours on the nose. And it is phenomenal from end to end. It's perfectly cooked and you didn't add.

[Phil]

Any fat in there.

[Jesse Griffiths]

But no.

[Phil]

No oil, no butter, no.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Sometimes the past Thanksgiving or two, I've gone and taken that and I. You can time it. You know, it's like everybody's getting here at 12:30, you know, like at 9.

[Stephen Rinella]

Why are they coming at 12:30?

[Phil]

That's how they do it.

[Stephen Rinella]

What do you mean, at night?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, p.m. i mean.

[Corinne]

Yeah, yeah.

[Phil]

Afternoon Thanksgiving lunchtime.

[Corinne]

Yeah. He just picked a random number. He can count back early hours.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Anyway.

[Randall]

Is that Central Time?

[Corinne]

You would think that'd be one of those things. Steve wouldn't have an opinion.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I know, I know.

[Stephen Rinella]

Although I love all this because I was. I had the same thing. Like, I would. In the end, I'd be like, well, you're supposed to put a bunch of butter in there, but not necessarily.

[Jesse Griffiths]

You could if you want it. But what I. What I'm getting to is I have, in the past couple Thanksgivings, taken it out of the bag and then seared it in a lot of brown butter or just butter and just one side, and it just got a nice light sear on it. I actually don't want to cook it that much. More like that. 140 on. On Turkey breast. It's just. It's so spot on.

[Stephen Rinella]

3 hours, 140 Wild Turkey, super moist.

[Jesse Griffiths]

And then just slice it out, you know, make some turkey stock gravy with giblets and so forth, and then mashed potatoes.

[Stephen Rinella]

You mean giblets?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Giblets.

[Stephen Rinella]

You call them giblets?

[Jesse Griffiths]

I guess I do.

[Stephen Rinella]

What do you call them? Randall call them?

[Randall]

Giblets?

[Jesse Griffiths]

I think that's right, now that I hear it out loud.

[Randall]

Tinnitus.

[Corinne]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

We were talking about this yesterday.

[Randall]

What was the word yesterday that we couldn't figure out?

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. And I told my favorite tinnitus story.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

What was that? We'll never know. I guess. We'll never know.

[Corinne]

It's nice to hear a non cutlet, non fried turkey breast recipe that you're. That you're really high on.

[Jesse Griffiths]

No offense to cutlets and turkey breasts. Oh, yeah. I mean, our fried turkey. I love fried turkey a lot.

[Phil]

Oh, yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

So.

[Phil]

Oh, yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay. So. Oh, you know what? Here, we left one off. Let's say you did your. So we got the guts, the skin, you said. Let's say you pull off the tenders.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, yeah. Okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay. Hit me with. So now you've pulled your tenders.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Off.

[Stephen Rinella]

Now hit me with the tenders.

[Jesse Griffiths]

There's a. There's a cool visual trick. Actually, this didn't go in the book. I. I cut it out with a knife. But since now I. Have you seen the fork trick where you hold. You notice that there's that really thick sinew that runs down about half of the tenderloin. Grip that in your hand and put a fork behind it. Just. And so that the two tines are around that sinew.

[Stephen Rinella]

So it's straddling the sinew.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yes. And then pull your hand back and push the fork forward, and it just pulls that entire seam right out like that.

[Stephen Rinella]

Was that not in the book?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Nice. I came to it after, you know, we published that thing pretty quick. I mean, that's a hot tip, man. No, it's good. It's really cool. And it gets that seam out of the tenderloin. And then you throw that in your stock. I would grill tenderloins. You can kind of weave them onto a skewer to kind of give them more. Get them more even. Yeah, I would say that. Or. Or fried. That's. I mean, not. Not. Not too creative with that.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay. We missing anything? We missing any parts of the turkey?

[Corinne]

I think. I think you should just walk us very quickly through. Just like you take those tenderloins, basic turkey nuggets.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. I brine them, and then brine a little bit of buttermilk so that you get a really good adhesion.

[Corinne]

So wet brine.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yep, yep. Can be simple. I mean, that's, you know, could just be salt and water. Maybe add pickle juice in there if you'd, like.

[Stephen Rinella]

Aren't you going to correct them about how it drives you crazy when people say that?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, dry brine. You remember? Yeah, it's fine.

[Randall]

You're not a fighter, are you?

[Jesse Griffiths]

A little.

[Stephen Rinella]

He maybe is the kind of guy that forgets his pet peeves.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. Yeah, that's funny. And then a little bit of buttermilk or yogurt, whatever. Just some kind of thick dairy. And then. And then it goes into the seasoned flour, which is going to be. Most importantly, again, it's going to contain celery seed, like, out of all all those spices. I think celery is. The celery and black pepper are kind of the most important things for a turkey, for poultry in general. That's gonna. That gives you that kfc. You're like, oh, that's what that was. It's always.

[Corinne]

What's the key to getting it really, like, that thick, you know, batter on there. Because like, I, I feel like I'm in there and it's all buttermilky. And then do I put them all in my basket first and drop it all at once? Are you going straight out of that buttermilk and dropping it?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Let them sit, Let them sit in the refrigerator for 20, 30 minutes, hour or two, doesn't matter. You let them sit. Also as you're, you've got your, your, your dredge, your flour and maybe a little buttermilk, maybe drizzle a little bit. So you get these little beads in there. And then what that's going to do, when that adheres, you're not just gonna have a thin layer of flour on there, but you're also gonna have these little beads of like buttermilky flour. And so they kind of give you a little more of those like crackling textures.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Little drizzle of that in there. Bread them up really well and then just set them in the refrigerator, get them cold in like 20 minutes. And then when that.

[Stephen Rinella]

But what about when it gets kind of doughy? You don't mind that?

[Jesse Griffiths]

No, it's gonna be fine.

[Stephen Rinella]

You don't mind it getting a little doughy?

[Jesse Griffiths]

No, I don't mind.

[Stephen Rinella]

You know what my kid's been doing? He just makes a God awful mess the way he does it. But he cuts the turkey breasts and makes little, little, A bunch of little tenders and then he just keeps doing it. Dredge flour. Oh, dredge flour. Because he's looking to try to build up like a Long John Silver slayer.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I feel like you're gonna get some like doughiness, dude.

[Stephen Rinella]

And then he drops him in the deep fryer and dude, that oil is so full of just all that garbage, man.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I think one round, then he eats.

[Stephen Rinella]

It and walks away.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I would go, I would go one round on the, on the dredge.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. He learned it on the Internet.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

That's awesome.

[Corinne]

I'm hungry.

[Stephen Rinella]

Okay, man. The turkey book, the hog book. What's next?

[Jesse Griffiths]

I don't know. I mean, I say that in all honesty, I'm batting around some ideas. And you know, everybody likes to pontificate.

[Stephen Rinella]

On what, you know would be a.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Blank book, the deer book. Right. It would be always. I get a lot of quests for Audad, but I don't think there's a book worth.

[Stephen Rinella]

I, I wouldn't be worried about there being a. With you, you'll find a book worth, but I feel like you might not find the audience right.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, the, the marketability of that would be more Very, very specific, dude.

[Stephen Rinella]

I feel like.

[Phil]

Yeah, but if you keep going, like, the way you're doing it, people are going to be like, I need the series.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. Oh, right, right.

[Phil]

They're beautiful. And it's like, ha, hog, turkey, deer.

[Stephen Rinella]

Or you could do the fish book.

[Phil]

Bowhead.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Well, I like fish a lot.

[Stephen Rinella]

The bullhead whale book. The fish book you'd probably want. Yeah. Like, for. I don't know. I mean, you have, you have a great sense what to do. Like, you know, hogs in and out. There's a lot of misinformation about hogs. It's a great book. Turkey book. You got a lot of experience. I mean, you have a ton of venison experience. There's a ton of interests. America's deer people are hunting them from top to bottom, side to side. The deer book, it's true.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I will say it's the front runner. I want to be non committal because.

[Stephen Rinella]

You could be cute and be like the squirrel book, but that's just cute. Yeah, you're just being cute, you know.

[Corinne]

And a little too niche.

[Phil]

Yeah, well, yeah, you'd be squirrel, but it's like, representative of the rodent book. Right. Do like beavers, muskrats, the beaver book, nutria. Yep. People would love it. I got something Jesse and I are doing. Please tell me this will be super fun. Buddy of mine, Eric Johansson, out in, in South Dakota, he's. He wouldn't like me saying this, but he's kind of like a poster child for. It'd be like, quote unquote, progressive farming practices these days. So real heavy on, you know, easements for wetlands and native grasses and, and stuff like that. Right. But which in turn happens to be really, really good for wildlife. So he's got. On the family farm out there, he's got just an unbelievable wild pheasant hunting situation and lodging and stuff. And he's a big believer, as am I, in like the habitat work of pheasants forever. So we and Jesse included here have. Have come together to. We're gonna do a. A hunt that we're auctioning off at Pheasant Fest this year. Fundraiser for habitat. And. Yeah. So we're gonna.

[Stephen Rinella]

So the, the fundraise money goes to.

[Phil]

Where two pheasants forever in the quad.

[Stephen Rinella]

The. In the. In the. And you're gonna hunt this property that is a demonstration of a lot of really good practices.

[Phil]

Yep. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

And you two both gonna hunt? Hunt?

[Phil]

Yeah, we're both gonna hunt. Eric's gonna hunt. I'm bringing snort out there. Eric has one of Snort's cousins, too, so that's fun. And it's super cute, obviously, but it.

[Stephen Rinella]

How many days does the winner get to hunt? It's.

[Phil]

I think it's three days a hunt for two people. Jesse's gonna be, you know, leading the cooking, but I've been emphatic about the fact that he's not shackled with cooking. I'm there to help as much as possible as allowed, so I can learn stuff, too. And then, yeah, we're gonna hunt lodging, and you just got to get. Get your butt there. But it is a really, really incredible. I've been lucky enough to go out there and hunt with Eric a couple of times, and he always says, your dog's invited if you would like to come. That's okay.

[Stephen Rinella]

What's up with the thousand dollar. I'm seeing a note about a thousand dollar gift card.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Not related. Or related.

[Phil]

No, that's related. So then, first light, we're throwing in a thousand dollar gift card.

[Stephen Rinella]

So to the winners.

[Phil]

To the winners. Yep. So 500 a piece to get. Get decked out. Just grease. Grease the wheels a little bit. And. And I'm gonna be available to help you with getting outfitted in your upland stuff from first light. So.

[Stephen Rinella]

Thanks, guys. That'll be fun.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, I've already started. We shot a few pheasants this year, and I've always started playing with the menu.

[Stephen Rinella]

Nice.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I love pheasants.

[Phil]

Yeah, that's gonna be good.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yes.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, what about the game bird book?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Could be. I love poultry a lot, so you.

[Randall]

Wouldn'T just go with bird book.

[Stephen Rinella]

The bird book?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. An economy of dialogue.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Yanni]

Big bird book.

[Stephen Rinella]

Dude, do the deer book because I want that book.

[Jesse Griffiths]

People are gonna be, like, blowing me up right now. When are you gonna write the deer book?

[Phil]

Well, hopefully you have all these names already locked down somewhere, and I would.

[Stephen Rinella]

Cook that book from front to back if you did it. It.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, right.

[Stephen Rinella]

Remember that movie where that gal.

[Phil]

Julia.

[Stephen Rinella]

Julia, yeah.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Oh, right.

[Stephen Rinella]

I do a book called Steve and Jesse.

[Yanni]

Do you know that movie Steve and.

[Stephen Rinella]

Jesse where I cook all this stuff?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Who are the actors?

[Stephen Rinella]

Amy Adams and Meryl Streep.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Bacon and Paul Jamati. Bam.

[Stephen Rinella]

Kevin Bacon. Paul G. Dude, that's it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Unreal.

[Randall]

All right, Beautiful.

[Stephen Rinella]

Or I also get the jackass guy.

[Phil]

Oh, Stevo.

[Stephen Rinella]

No, Johnny Knoxville. Yeah, yeah. I've checked in lately, though.

[Jesse Griffiths]

I don't.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't know if I'm older than he is, so I'm kind of.

[Corinne]

No, he's way Gray. He's grayed out.

[Stephen Rinella]

I don't know if I'm passing hard.

[Randall]

Years on those boys.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. Thanks for coming on, man.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

[Stephen Rinella]

Hog book, turkey book, deer book.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

Get two of them. Are you gonna bundle them when the.

[Randall]

Deer book comes out?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

You should.

[Corinne]

The trilogy.

[Stephen Rinella]

You should maybe do. You have. You should maybe do a version where you can just get them in a little box, like the pair.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah, we'll wait until that third one comes.

[Stephen Rinella]

Oh, then you do a box set. Good luck, man.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Thanks.

[Stephen Rinella]

When you go to Austin, Texas, and everybody eventually finds themselves in Austin, Texas, go to DAI Due. Unbelievable dining experience, man. Again, unbelievable.

[Yanni]

What does DAI do?

[Jesse Griffiths]

I mean, it literally means from the two. It's part of an Italian phrase. It means from the two kingdoms of nature. Choose food with care, you know?

[Stephen Rinella]

So funny, we took an Uber when we left.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Guys.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like, how do you say that? I'm like, you should go on and ask the owner.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

I was like, it's die do it. Yeah, die do it. Unbelievable dining experience.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Thank you.

[Stephen Rinella]

And not stuffy, man. No, not stuffy.

[Jesse Griffiths]

It's meant to be a neighborhood restaurant.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah. And the waiters and waitresses. The waitress, they don't act weird. The wait staff doesn't act weird. They don't, like, whisper and sit with you, start telling you a bunch of you don't want to hear. It's just like. It's just a great dining experience, man.

[Jesse Griffiths]

No, they are the backbone of it.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, what I have tonight, they don't. It's like, they don't do all that garbage, my friends. Yeah.

[Randall]

It's a delightful little dish.

[Stephen Rinella]

Well, tonight I have. From my friends at the winery. Yeah. It's like, oh, my God, don't do anything. This is cool. They're cool. They come up and take your order and talk to you.

[Jesse Griffiths]

That's right.

[Stephen Rinella]

Like you're a person in a restaurant. Not like you're in, like, an online, like, call for company. 1-800-number or something. It's a great. It is a great restaurant.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Good. Yep. I like it. I like eating there.

[Stephen Rinella]

And if you see Jesse eating in there, come up and be like, dude, shouldn't you be working, you lazy ass?

[Jesse Griffiths]

Yeah.

[Stephen Rinella]

All right. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Thank you.

[Corinne]

Thanks, Jesse.

[Jesse Griffiths]

Thanks.

[Stephen Rinella]

For those of you who like to spend your life outdoors, there's no such thing as an off season. And there's no better truck to power through season after season than one from the Ram Heavy duty lineup. It's got power that goes the distance with the available high output 6.7 liter Cummins turbo diesel and a 50 gallon fuel tank to help you travel further. You can haul it all. Head to ram.com to find the right Ram heavy duty truck for your next trip outdoors. That's. That's R A M.com Hallelujah. Turkey season is upon us. Having the right gear can make all the difference. FIRST Lights New Tree Line Turkey Vest is designed to meet the needs of serious hunters who value versatility. This new vest offers the perfect balance between lightweight mobility and ample storage. Meaning you want a turkey vest that you can carry all your stuff. But then you also want to be able to go through the woods like a grease hog. And there's like a conflict between these two things. Things this vest hits that balance. It's like. It's like you're going. You're going through the woods like a grease tog, but you still have the stuff you want to have with you. It hits the balance okay. Crafted from durable quiet four way stretch fabric with a water repellent finish, it ensures you stay silent and dry during those early morning dewy hunts. The molded foam back panel and thick foam seat provide comfort for long sitting sits. When it's time to move, the seat flips up and cinches tight against the back. With dual chest molle webbing platforms, you can customize your setup with rangefinder pouches or shot shell holders. Dual zip secure pot call pouches, elastic striker holsters and external elastic mouth call slots ensure your calls are organized and within easy reach. The modular box call pouch with a sliding magnetic closure attaches seamlessly, ensuring quick access when that gobbler responds. It's got a game pouch too. Decoy steak sleeves. You're always losing those dumb things. And adjustable load lifter shoulder straps so you can haul all your gear and hopefully a big old tom. FIRST Lights Attention to detail ensures that every feature of the tree Line Turkey vest enhances your hunting experience. Check it out first light.com get ready to hit the woods with confidence. That's F I R S T L I T E Com.